Amazon won its fight against an European Union order to pay some 250 million euros ($303 million) in so-called back taxes to Luxembourg in another blow to European Commission competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s tax grab crusade.
The bloc failed to show that Luxembourg had given the U.S. online retailer special treatment in violation of state-aid rules, the EU’s General Court ruled on Wednesday.
The victory follows last year’s landmark defeat for Vestager against Apple, which had contested an order that it pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in Irish back taxes.
Both Amazon and Apple were targeted by Vestager in a campaign to stamp out tax deals used by EU states such as Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to attract large companies.
“The Commission did not prove to the requisite legal standard that there was an undue reduction of the tax burden of a European subsidiary of the Amazon group,” the Luxembourg-based EU judges said.
MacDailyNews Take: Smirk.
Margrethe Vestager is really good at one thing: Losing.
Newsflash: Corporations don’t pay taxes, you do. “Corporate taxes” are simply passed along to the consumer. It’s how the government sneakily double-taxes its citizens. You’re taxed on your income and then again on what’s left via higher prices across the board. — MacDailyNews Take, December 4, 2015