US Treasury deputy assistant secretary of international tax affairs Robert Stack met with EU officials in Brussels on 29 January to express Washington’s concerns over the ‘unfair targeting’ of US multinationals, following EC state aid investigations into Apple, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Amazon.
Stack was widely reported to be particularly concerned that EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager was ‘disproportionately targeting US companies’ in her wide-ranging investigations, especially after Vestager indicated she would probe Google’s recent controversial £130m UK tax deal following complaints to the EC from the Scottish National Party. Vestager, who did not attend the meeting with Stack, told reporters: ‘It is the same argument as we have heard before … Just as it is an obvious right for US tax authorities to tax revenues when they are repatriated, it is also for European tax authorities to tax money that is made in the member states.’
Stack said the US was ‘concerned that the EU commission is in effect telling member states how they should have applied their own tax laws over a 10-year period’. He added: ‘We are greatly concerned that the EU commission is reaching out to tax income that no member state has the right to tax under internationally accepted standards. The mere fact that the US system has left these amounts untaxed until repatriated does not provide under international tax standards a right for another jurisdiction to tax those amounts.’
Stack’s visit came shortly after 31 countries – excluding the US – signed the OECD’s multilateral competent authority agreement (MCAA) on 27 January to facilitate the automatic exchange of country-by-country reporting, called for in action 13 of the OECD/G20 base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project.
US Treasury deputy assistant secretary of international tax affairs Robert Stack met with EU officials in Brussels on 29 January to express Washington’s concerns over the ‘unfair targeting’ of US multinationals, following EC state aid investigations into Apple, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Amazon.
Stack was widely reported to be particularly concerned that EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager was ‘disproportionately targeting US companies’ in her wide-ranging investigations, especially after Vestager indicated she would probe Google’s recent controversial £130m UK tax deal following complaints to the EC from the Scottish National Party. Vestager, who did not attend the meeting with Stack, told reporters: ‘It is the same argument as we have heard before … Just as it is an obvious right for US tax authorities to tax revenues when they are repatriated, it is also for European tax authorities to tax money that is made in the member states.’
Stack said the US was ‘concerned that the EU commission is in effect telling member states how they should have applied their own tax laws over a 10-year period’. He added: ‘We are greatly concerned that the EU commission is reaching out to tax income that no member state has the right to tax under internationally accepted standards. The mere fact that the US system has left these amounts untaxed until repatriated does not provide under international tax standards a right for another jurisdiction to tax those amounts.’
Stack’s visit came shortly after 31 countries – excluding the US – signed the OECD’s multilateral competent authority agreement (MCAA) on 27 January to facilitate the automatic exchange of country-by-country reporting, called for in action 13 of the OECD/G20 base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project.
.jpg?sfvrsn=335a554c_0 "300 x 250 (MPU)")