Czech windfall tax would affect energy, banks and maybe another sector -finance minister

PRAGUE, Aug 19 (Reuters) – The Czech government will decide in three weeks whether to impose a windfall tax on large energy companies and banks and may include one more sector if it goes ahead, Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura said on Friday.

The government is looking at ways to get extra revenue to cover 66 billion crowns ($2.70 billion) it plans to use to subsidise household energy tariffs over the 2022-2023 heating season. 

“We are considering one more sector, besides the two (banking, energy) which are known,” Stanjura told reporters.

“We have not decided yet, including me. If I considered it as something not right, I would have been saying that from the beginning,” he said, adding that the government would make a decision by Sept. 10.

He would not say which sector might be included in the windfall tax other than energy and banking.

($1 = 24.4820 Czech crowns)

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Toby Chopra and Susan Fenton)