Amazon scored a major legal victory on Wednesday when an EU court annulled an order from the bloc s powerful antitrust authority that Luxembourg recoup €250 million in back taxes.
The decision handed a fresh defeat to EU competition supremo Margrethe Vestager who in 2017 accused Luxembourg of handing tax privileges to the internet retail giant that amounted to illegal state aid.
But the EU General Court found no selective advantage had been given to the firm by the small EU Duchy, a statement said.
The setback for the EU lands less than a year after iPhone maker Apple spectacularly won its appeal in the same court against the European Commission s blockbuster order in 2016 that Apple repay Ireland 13 billion euros.
EU silent on Amazon s zero corporate tax scandal
Amazon reported $8.1bn [€6.74bn] globally in quarterly net income - up 224 percent from the same period in the previous year (Photo: palomaleca)
Brussels, Today, 07:04
The European Commission says it cannot comment on revelations that Amazon paid no corporate tax in Europe last year, despite recording more than €40bn in sales income there during the pandemic. I am not going to go into the details of these press articles, a commission spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday (4 May), when pressed.
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Biden administration widens digital tax push to target world s 100 largest companies politico.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from politico.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Progress on EU public CbCR is a significant move forward on tax transparency
In what has been described by tax justice campaigners as a landmark move forward on tax transparency, the EU ministers in the Competitiveness Council (COMPET) agreed on February 25 that public CbCR should be introduced.
The proposal only passed after Slovenia and Austria supported it. However, the legislation needs to include certain safeguards and be limited to reporting requirements on companies in EU member states or in the jurisdictions listed on the EU tax blacklist.
Although 14 countries backed public CbCR, ministers representing Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Sweden, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Cyprus were either against it or abstained. If all countries choose to formally adopt the proposal in writing next week, the measure will move forward to negotiations in the EU Council and EU Parliament.
IMF’s continued VAT push inconsistent with rhetoric on progressive taxes 6 January by
Summary
Broader tax trends steadily shift burdens to women and those least able to pay
http://imf.org
hosted the first of a series of webinars celebrating the rise of value added taxes (VAT) and the Fund’s “world-wide leading role” in spreading the use of VAT, as noted in opening remarks by Vitor Gaspar, director of the IMF’s fiscal affairs department (FAD). Reflecting long-standing civil society concerns that the IMF relies too heavily on regressive taxes like VAT without systematically measuring their distributional and gendered impacts, many questions were raised on the regressivity of VAT during the event (see