All EU member states told to release tax ruling information 

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All EU member states have now been drawn into the European Commission’s investigation into the use of tax rulings to offer preferential tax treatment to multinationals

The Commission has extended the scope of its enquiry into tax rulings practice under EU state aid rules to the entire EU28 member states.

This is part of the Commission’s wide-ranging investigation into the alleged use of aggressive tax planning by multinationals, which kicked off with probes into Fiat in Luxembourg, Apple in Ireland and Starbucks in the Netherlands. There is also an ongoing probe into the tax affairs of big business in Belgium, although the outcome of the information request has not yet been published, while Amazon’s arrangements in Luxembourg are also under scrutiny.

The Commission is now going to ask all member states to provide information about their tax ruling practice, in particular to confirm whether they provide tax rulings, and, if they do, to request a list of all companies that have received a tax ruling from 2010 to 2013.

The Commission had already requested similar information on tax rulings from several member states, including the UK, in June 2013.

A statement from the Commission said: ‘A number of member states seem to allow multinational companies to take advantage of their tax systems and thereby to reduce their tax burden’.

This expansion of the enquiry is said to be fully in line with the recent calls for more transparency of tax rulings, in particular the initiative announced by EU president Jean-Claude Juncker, the former premier of Luxembourg, on the upcoming legal proposal regarding the automatic exchange of information on tax rulings.

The extension of the tax rulings probe will supplement the ongoing information collecting exercise into the use of intellectual property taxation regimes, including patent boxes, from the ten member states with such a regime. These include the UK, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

The move comes after the release of further information about the role of the Big Four accounting firms in negotiating favourable tax agreeements with the Luxembourg tax authorities, released under the so-called Lux Leaks label.

 

Source: accountancylive – All EU member states told to release tax ruling information 

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