By Tom Fairless
BRUSSELS--The European Union won't meet a self-imposed June
deadline for deciding whether four multinational companies
including Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. benefited from illegal tax
sweeteners, the bloc's antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said
Tuesday.
"We won't meet the deadline we set ourselves [of] the end of the
second quarter," Ms. Vestager told European lawmakers at a hearing
Tuesday. She said she wouldn't give a new deadline for finalizing
the cases.
The EU has opened a series of high-profile probes in recent
months into tax deals struck by four multinationals--Apple in
Ireland, Amazon and Fiat SpA in Luxembourg and Starbucks Corp. in
the Netherlands. Ms. Vestager had pledged to reach a decision by
the end of June as to whether the deals violate EU law, which could
be followed by significant back-tax demands.
The investigations have been a priority for the EU's executive
arm at a time of deep national austerity, as governments across the
continent seek to shore up their finances and demonstrate to
taxpayers that wealthy multinationals are paying their fair share
of tax. EU regulators have no authority to impose tax policy on the
bloc's 28 governments, but they are using an EU-wide ban on
selective state aid to companies to crack down on individual tax
deals that they deem to have given an unfair advantage to certain
enterprises.
Ms. Vestager attributed the delay to difficulties in obtaining
information from the countries involved. Luxembourg had resisted
the commission's requests for tax documents until late last year
and was fighting the case in court. But the country's prime
minister Xavier Bettel agreed in December to share information on
tax deals secured by multinational companies, after the commission
also asked other EU countries to share their tax rulings.
"Obviously fast is better than slow, but better than all is
being just," Ms. Vestager said.
The commissioner said she was also examining concerns from trade
unions over Luxembourg's tax dealings with McDonald's Corp. "We are
looking into the information...to assess if there is a case," she
said.
Ms. Vestager said she wouldn't hesitate to open further
investigations if she suspected that the bloc's rules were being
violated. "We cannot do every case in the world but we can find
cases that we think [are] deeply problematic," she said.
The EU's executive arm "is committed to this agenda and we will
do our best to tackle corporate tax avoidance within the EU," she
said. Part of the rationale for the tax investigations is to
"inspire" national governments to change their legislation, as
Ireland has in eliminating the double-Irish tax loophole, she
added.
Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
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