BRUSSELS: The United States has attacked high-profile EU tax probes into American companies as unfair and encroaching on the US government’s right to tax them, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
The European Commission has cracked down hard on companies, including US icons such as Apple, Starbucks and Amazon, which worked out arrangements with European Union member countries allowing them to slash their tax bills.
EU Competition Commissioner Magrethe Vestager has made a point of testing these “tax rulings,” which are legal in themselves, to see if they breach strict bloc competition rules by giving some companies an advantage over their rivals.
The FT said Robert Stack, a US Treasury official, met EU competition officials in Brussels on Friday to express Washington’s concerns.
“We are concerned that the EU Commission appears to be disproportionately targeting US companies,” Stack was quoted as saying.
Stack’s visit came just one day after the commission launched plans to stamp out tax avoidance by multi-national corporations.
“The days are numbered for companies that aggressively reduce their tax bills,” EU Economics Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.
The key proposal is that a company should report its profit country by country, rather than as now be allowed to shift earnings around into lower tax jurisdictions.
