BRUSSELS-The European Union won't meet a self-imposed June
deadline for deciding whether four multinational companies
including Apple Inc. (APPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) 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 (FCA.MI) in Luxembourg and Starbucks
Corp. (SBUX) 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.
Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
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