An EU concept under which member states are not allow to artificially keep alive businesses that cannot survive without aid from the state.
“Improper and plainly undermines legal certainty and the rule of law.” This is how four U.S. senators – including the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee – recently described the European Commission’s State aid investigation into tax rulings by Member States, including into Ireland’s tax treatment of Apple. Of course the…
On 6 June 2016, the European Commission finally released its decision in the McDonald’s State Aid case. After the clarifications recently provided on the Commission’s position concerning transfer pricing cases and the arm’s length principle (see especially its decision in the Belgian Excess Profits Exemption Scheme, §§ 145–150, clarifying the Commission’s reliance on an independent…
“Starbucks tax deal equals inadmissible state aid”: it was with this headline that newspapers reported on 21 October 2015 that the European Commission – instigated by Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition – had ruled that the Netherlands had been favouring Starbucks with an “inadmissible” tax advantage in the 20 to 30 million euro…
On January 15, 2016, in a joint (bi-partisan) letter of Senate Finance Committee Republicans and Democrats to US Treasury, one that will certainly be of interest to our friends at Wolters Kluwer (a Netherlands parent multinational enterprise), the Senate Finance Committee members encouraged Treasury to use a tit-for-tat strategy against the EU Commission. The letter stated that…
Since the press releases confirming negative State Aid decisions in the Starbucks and Fiat tax ruling cases late October, the EU tax law community is still eagerly awaiting the publication of the actual decisions (to be published here and here). Most likely, the decisions will hinge on the concrete transfer pricing calculations made (or accepted)…
Starbucks Manufacturing BV (SMBV), based in the Netherlands, is the only coffee roasting company in the Starbucks group in Europe. It sells and distributes roasted coffee and coffee-related products (e.g. cups, packaged food, pastries) to Starbucks outlets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Read my previous comments on this case post here. The EU…
Introduction It has been a few weeks now since the Commission has made public its decisions in the FIAT and Starbucks cases. I understand that the Commission, the countries involved and the taxpayers are now going through the decisions themselves, agreeing on what information is too confidential to be published, before the actual – blacked…
The 1999 Simmons & Simmons report on administrative practices is now public, together with the responses by Member States. My suspicion was correct: France had reason to keep the documents a secret. Let me explain. On 22 April, 2015, I published on this a site a blog titled: “A mysterious study in the Code of…
Both Starbucks and Fiat represent, if one listened closely to the live press release broadcast, an first salvo by the EU Commission to establish that it has the authority, under a State Aid premise, to step into the shoes of the national revenue authority and re-allocate profits of an enterprise according to the EU Commission’s…
Let’s go back a few weeks, to March 18, 2015. The EU Commission announces its much heralded Tax Transparency package. The package contains a surprise element: the link to the Code of Conduct Report of 1999. To refresh memories: this report, lead by a UK national, contained 66 harmful tax measures. The 66 could be…
The OECD Public Discussion Draft on BEPS Action 14 (released on 18 December 2014) covers extensively dispute resolution mechanisms and ways to make them more effective. The subject has grown in importance as Mutual Agreement Procedures (“MAP”) have increased significantly especially on transfer pricing cross border adjustments. In this context, the BEPS Discussion Draft states…
It is well known that the world’s economies have turned into a global economy during the last decades. Moreover, it is nowadays common knowledge – also outside the professional tax community – that states are fighting each other for tax revenue, while multinationals are trying to reduce their tax burden through tax planning that may…
