Brussels 20/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission may reach a decision before July to order Luxembourg to recover nearly €400 million from Amazon in illegal state aid granted under a tax ruling, the news agency Reuters reported on Friday 20 May.
The Commission made its objections known in January 2015. At the time, the Commission said that it was questioning the selective advantage available to an American multinational company as a result of the methodology used to calculate the tax base of the company LuxOpCo (Amazon EU Sarl), a subsidiary of Amazon headquartered in Luxembourg and concentrating the profits of the group's European entities.
This methodology, which is exaggeratedly complex and most unusual with regard to OECD guidelines, allows LuxOpCo to limit its taxable profit to €70 million and to transfer, in the form of a fee, a considerable proportion (€500 million a year) of its revenue to another Luxembourg-based Amazon company, Lux SCS, whose activities are not taxable (see EUROPE 11232). (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)