Today, the European Commission has closed three in-depth State aid investigations into transfer pricing tax rulings granted by Luxembourg to Fiat and Amazon and by the Netherlands to Starbucks. Following judgments by the EU courts, the Commission found that these tax rulings did not confer selective advantages on the companies.
As a reminder, in 2015 and 2017, the Commission found that Luxembourg had granted selective tax advantages to Fiat and Amazon and that the Netherlands had done the same to Starbucks, in breach of EU State aid rules. In each case, the Commission found that a tax ruling issued by the tax authorities of the countries concerned, artificially reduced the tax paid by each company and thus gave them a selective advantage over other companies. The Commission's initial decisions in all three cases were eventually annulled by the EU courts and the respective in-depth investigations therefore remained open.
For more background on this topic, please refer to our previous newsletters dated 14 December 2023 and 22 December 2022.
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