No 33 billion from the banks. The windfall tax will only bring in a fraction, Stanjura admitted

Analysts have previously pointed out that the windfall tax for the banking sector will not bring the promised revenues to the state budget. Deputy Minister of Finance Marek Mora also said this at the parliamentary committee meeting this week, when he announced “units of billions”.

“I have no reason to contradict what the Deputy was saying,” Stanjura said. “In the political dictionary, units means up to five,” he added.

The state imposed a windfall tax on energy, petrochemical and mining companies and on large banks. He justified this by their unexpected income as a result of a sharp increase in energy prices, and in the case of banks, a significant increase in interest rates. However, the six largest domestic banks that will pay tax on extraordinary profits this year earned a total of CZK 57.1 billion in the three quarters of this year. In the same period last year, it was 58.4 billion crowns.

In addition, energy producers pay a revenue levy for more expensive electricity above government-set thresholds for individual energy sources. Windfall tax collection was 25.8 billion crowns at the end of October. So far, the state has collected 17.3 billion crowns from the levy from excessive income from electricity production.

When drawing up the state budget for this year, the Ministry of Finance stated that income from the windfall tax should reach 85 billion crowns and from levies 15 billion crowns. However, in the August forecast of fiscal revenues, the Ministry of Finance announced a decrease: it said that this year the state will collect 46 billion crowns from the windfall tax, the levy from excessive revenues should bring 18.5 billion crowns to the state budget this year.

Minister Stanjura previously stated that the revenue from both measures this year will not fully cover the compensation of high energy prices that the state provides to companies and households.