Amazon is celebrating because they marked their spot by winning a major case this Wednesday. Amazon has won a lawsuit against an E.U. order regarding payment of 250 million euros for back taxes to Luxembourg in a different competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s movement versus advantageous deals.
They won because the block could not showcase that Luxemburg already had provided the U.S. The online retailer specialized treatment in breach of the state’s rules and regulations.
Amazon has its European Headquarters in Luxembourg, the same place as the General Court of the European Union. It repudiated the claim against the online retailers advantaging of a good tax deal.
Last year Apple also went through the same kind of claim against Vestager. Vestager has tried targeting both the companies Apple and Amazon. To mark out taxes deals used by different E.U. states in a campaign to get attention from all the big companies worldwide. Although, the agreement was stated unfairly by Commission.
Luxembourg’s E.U. judge says,” the Commission, however, did not explain the legal rule about an extreme lowering of the tax burden of a European subsidiary of the Amazon group.
“After standing for a long time and following all the relevant laws, still we received no special treatment,” Amazon said while welcoming the ruling.
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While Vestager said she would go through the ruling sincerely before she decided to appeal or not to Europe’s top court. But, still, it was not too much of a bad day for Vestager. Nevertheless, the ruling that happened on Tuesday left Vestager astonished. As she just experienced and enjoyed only a mixed track record in her efforts to a crackdown. So that she can claim as just some sweetheart tax deals between big companies and the E.U. countries.
On Tuesday, there was one more case: The general Court asked a french service, Engie, to pay 120 million euros as back taxes to Luxembourg. While Amazon won a case, a French service Engie lost its case and had to pay 120 million euros back taxes to Luxembourg.
Still, Everyone was waiting for Amazon’s decision that different groups live on multinationals for higher taxes.
Taxes of Amazon
A tax expert from Oxfam E.U. says, ” It was a blow at today’s rule.
” And, again, the case studies are not solving the high-scale tax-dodging problem.”
The amount of money at stake in Amazon’s decision is minimal. Suppose we compare this amount to the billions of dollars earned by online retailers each quarter. But, their decision will surely help companies appeal the taxes scrutinies again.
Last Year’s Europe’s revenue had an addition of 44 billion euros, which was possible because of the ample amount of online shopping people did during the pandemic; still, the company paid no tax to Luxembourg.
However, Amazon claims to pay all the taxes and the related expenses that it earns from Germany, France, U.K. Spain and Italy, where it has its branches established.
Summary
Some places like Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland have changed their tax methods and have encouraged the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This tries to achieve a global deal on why big companies are taxed. Vestager successfully did this all to make these places do the same. After researching a little, OECD said that the global deals have never reached such heights.
While European Commission was ruling in 2017, it thumped down this Wednesday when Amazon won the case against the appeal for the back tax claimed by Luxembourg and allowed it to send profits to a stopping company tax-free.
In 2018, there were decisions on Engie occurring where the E.U. announced the agreement with Luxembourg Officials. Moreover, to reduce its tax load, a tax rate of 0.3% was paid for a decade on profits in Luxembourg.
sourced by: amazon not paying 250 million euros
