Margrethe Vestager, the EU official in charge of antitrust issues, argued at the time that Amazon had unfairly profited from special low tax conditions since 2003 in tiny Luxembourg, where its European headquarters are based. As a result, almost three quarters of Amazon’s profits in the EU were not taxed, she said. Vestager didn t reply immediately to a request for comment.
Both Luxembourg and Amazon challenged the decision with the EU s General Court.
Credit: AP
In this Feb. 19, 2013 file photo, the internet trader Amazon logo is seen behind barbed wire at the company s logistic center in Rheinberg, Germany. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
EU court sides with Amazon in $300M tax case
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Amazon.com Inc. has won a key appeal against a 2017 decision by the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, that ordered it to pay about €250 million in back taxes to Luxembourg.
The company’s legal victory came in the form of a ruling issued today by the bloc’s second-highest court. The General Court of the European Union ruled that the “contested decision must be annulled in its entirety.”
The beginnings of the legal saga can be traced much further back than the 2017 European Commission decision, to 2006, when Amazon organized its EU operations around two subsidiaries. The first subsidiary, Amazon EU SARL, collected all the company’s e-commerce revenue in the bloc. The subsidiary moved most of the profits from those e-commerce sales to a second, Luxembourg-based Amazon unit called Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS that didn’t have to pay taxes.