Apple to Fiat EU Tax Cases Should Be Finished Ahead of New Ones
The European Union should complete its four tax probes before it can “decide what to do next,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.
“Maybe in the beginning of the second quarter of next year we will have results on at least some of those open cases,” Vestager told reporters after a hearing with EU lawmakers in Brussels.
Once investigations into Apple Inc. (AAPL:US) in Ireland, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN:US) and Fiat Finance & Trade in Luxembourg and Starbucks Corp. (SBUX:US) in the Netherlands are finished the EU will “know much, much more about what actually goes on,” Vestager told lawmakers.
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The EU is targeting tax deals throughout the 28-nation bloc that may have given companies unfair advantages. Last week, a report revealed details of deals used by more than 340 companies to transfer profits to Luxembourg using complicated tax arrangements.
While the European Commission will “of course” take the leaked documents into consideration, “it is very important to approach this in a way that will actually achieve results,” Vestager said in reference to the report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The EU’s strategy shouldn’t be “just to open” new cases based on newspaper reports, Vestager said.
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“I do not exclude anything of course, but I’m just trying to find a practical and effective way” to proceed, she said.
Vestager said the EU would publish “later this week, probably Friday” details of their Starbucks investigation, adding to information they already announced on the Apple and Fiat probes.
