Spar files a complaint with the EU about the special tax in Hungary

According to Spar, the Hungarian government is violating EU law with the discriminatory special tax introduced in 2022. Spar also objects to the price cap, which on the one hand means that they have to sell more products at a lower price than what they bought them for, and on the other hand, they remained in place despite a significant drop in inflation.

According to Spar, these measures are clearly incompatible with EU law, the Hungarian government increased the company’s costs by 90 million euros and caused a loss of nearly 50 million euros in 2023.

The managing director of the domestic Spar previously told Telex that it is not possible to operate a retail company profitably with this level of tax burden.

“In our industry, for traders like us, the expected profit in proportion to revenue is between 2-3 percent. If a special tax of 4-5 percent is imposed on us, then under normal conditions, we will not be able to operate profitably in the long term.”

said Gabriella Heiszler.

The Hungarian government did not respond to the Financial Times’ request for comment on Spar’s complaints, and the European Commission declined to comment.