June 21, 2018

In 2014 a report of thousands of pages revealed that Luxembourg had secret illegal arrangements in tax deals with the following companies: Walt Disney, Microsoft, Skype and Pepsi. Since then the European Commission has used the so-called LuxLeaks publications very carefully but meanwhile EU officials tried to dig out more “outliers.”

In 2015, Luxembourg was ordered by the EU to recoup car maker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles for 30 million euros (US$35 million) in back taxes.  On the same day, Starbucks was also demanded by the EU payback ruling to surrender 30 million euros over its tax deals in Netherlands. On August 30, 2016, the EU ordered Ireland to collect 14.5 billion euros in unpaid taxes plus interest from Apple. In 2017, the EU ordered Luxembourg to recoup 250 million euros from Amazon.

Although Luxembourg refused to accept the commission’s conclusions in the Fiat and Amazon cases, the ordeal continues as the EU ordered Luxembourg to recover tax bill of 120 million euros (US$138.8 million) from French utility company Engie on June 20 this year. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Luxembourg-based Engie LNG Supply and Engie Treasury Management avoided paying any tax on 99 percent of their profits for about a decade.