The new president of the European Commission has come under renewed pressure over the tax avoidance schemes instituted in Luxembourg when he was prime minister.
Now the EU executive has said it will see that legislation is quickly put in place to better scrutinise tax avoidance deals for big corporations.
Although Jean-Claude Juncker last week survived a motion of censure over the issue, brought by several far-right parties, it has not gone away.
The new legislation would oblige EU governments to share information on agreements they have made with multinationals, specifying how much corporation tax they are expected to pay.
France, Germany and Italy demanded tougher, binding regulations and declared that the practices in Luxembourg while Juncker was prime minister for 18 years had made the response more urgent.
They said their citizens and their companies expected them to deal with “tax avoidance and aggressive planning”.
Last month, media analysis of 28,000 leaked documents revealed that authorities in Luxembourg helped 340 large firms minimise their tax payments, some to just 1%.
The European Commission is already investigating the arrangements between Luxembourg and Amazon as well as a subsidiary of Fiat.
The revelations hit the public just days after Mr Juncker took up his five-year post as president of the European Commission, following on from Portugal’s own Sr. Barroso.
Last week Mr Juncker said Luxembourg had no choice but to act the way it did because other EU countries were doing the same.
Comments
There is a fundamental problem with all tax evasion vs tax minimisation schemes.
But it is like climate change ... it suits some countries not to 'play fair'.
This may sound stunningly naive but ideally the World Bank and World Trade organisation and IMF and such like get round a table and set a global minimum tax rate. No country or 'off-shore can go below it.
What is crazy is that the off-shores must be declaring the total value of their activities - if not the individual deals - to their host countries in order to be taxed themselves and operate there.
And how much of this is money laundering for criminals and terrorists ?
But if any country whistle blows then the off-shore goes somewhere else off-shore'.
How long before we are all forced to go 'off shore' ?
Well it just doesnt´t wash. You either believe in the European project, or you carve legal escape routes around it.
Juncker stinks. One can have no faith in the EU with him at its helm.
No choice, lmao. I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and pass a better excuse.