Amazon on Thursday won its fight against an EU order to pay about 250 million euros ($303 million) in back taxes to Luxembourg as Europe’s second highest court dealt a blow to the bloc’s crackdown against unfair tax deals for multinationals.
In a separate case, French utility Engie however lost its appeal against an EU order to pay back taxes of 120 million euros ($145.7 million) to Luxembourg.
The Luxembourg-based General Court said Amazon had not enjoyed a selective advantage in its tax deal with Luxembourg.
“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 judge said.
The Amazon ruling is a setback for European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has aggressively used the bloc’s state aid rules to tackle sweetheart tax deals between multinationals and EU countries.
Vestager has a mixed record so far. The biggest setback was last year when the General Court threw out her order to iPhone maker Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in Irish back taxes.
via Reuters
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