“The European Union, locked in a tax battle with the likes of Apple Inc. and McDonald’s Corp., laid down the law in its bid to rein in governments that woo multinationals with special fiscal deals allowing them to reduce their fiscal liability by booking profits abroad,” Gaspard Sebag reports for Bloomberg. “The European Commission, which can ban unfair tax advantages conferred to companies, outlined measures cutting member states’ ability to make rulings that lower the tax burden of foreign businesses.”
“Thursday’s publication, which sets out how the regulator will police state aid, sends a warning shot to corporations shifting profits, insisting that such transactions between subsidiaries should be based on market prices,” Sebag reports. “The regulator on Thursday laid out the powers at its disposal to limit the type of deals it’s probing in Ireland concerning Apple.”
Sebag reports, “All the companies and countries targeted by the EU have denied they broke any rules, raising the prospect of protracted legal challenges.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple followed the law when paying their taxes:
There was no special deal that we cut with Ireland. We simply followed the laws in the country over the 35 years that we have been in Ireland. If the question is, was there ever a ‘quid pro quo’ that we were trying to strike with the Irish government – that was never the case. We’ve always been very transparent with the Irish government that we wanted to be a good corporate citizen… If countries change the tax laws, we will abide by the new laws and we will pay taxes according to those laws. – Apple CFO Luca Maestri
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