big is out of fashion. Governments, to the applause of those who shout on the networks, approve taxes on “big companies” and on “great fortunes”. When is a company big? When invoice N million euros? When does he have N million profits? When does it have N thousand workers? When you have a capital of N million? It is not known. It is also said that taxes will be placed on profits that have fallen from the sky. Without taking into account the increase in costs? Without weighing the risk? This populist wave has a reasonable basis: taxation must punish those who earn a lot of money by investing very little without risk, do not give work and avoid paying taxes. We would all agree on that, starting with the entrepreneurs and the companies that do the opposite. A manager of one of the companies that may be victims of the populist wave of governments explained to me that last year they had 1,200 million profits after paying 2,500 million taxes, having disbursed a capital of 50,000 million and employing more than 10,000 people. It’s a big company. But with a contribution to what the classics called the share capital much higher than that of a company with 5 workers that disburses a capital of 3,000 euros and obtains profits of 5 million euros.
The attack on large companies ends up being an attack on companies as a concept. An invitation to medium-sized companies not to reinvest their profits and generate more work and a way to scare away potential investors who can create it. This wave can cause European and Spanish companies to lose value in the stock markets due to the burden of taxes on their dividends. It will not be the first time that populism has obtained results contrary to those expected. We killed the boxes because they were in the hands of politicians and now we ask for public banks. We eliminated tolls and now we see how to reduce traffic while we decide who pays for the maintenance of the expressways. And in no way, we will regret that this or that company stops being Spanish or European and falls into the hands of North American vulture funds that will gut them until they stop being big and pay less taxes. There are companies that only make sense if they are large. And the size does not measure his moral stature.