New sting from the EU antitrust against multinationals trying to avoid taxation in Europe: after the cases of Starbucks and Fiat in the Netherlands and Luxembourg, this time it is Belgium is targeted for his incentive scheme applied to 35 companies and considered "illegal". Brussels is therefore asking the Belgian government to recover 700 million euros in evaded taxes from these.
“Belgium has given a big head start to a select number of multinationalscontrary to state aid rules. It distorts competition to the detriment of smaller companies,” said competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. The Belgian tax scheme called 'excess profits', applied since 2005, has allowed some multinationals to pay less tax in Belgium on the basis of 'tax rulings'. The scheme reduces the tax base by between 50% and 90%, to discount the so-called "excess profits" that come from being part of a multinational group.
The investigation opened by the EU Commission in February 2015 showed that the scheme departed from the normal regime that Belgium applies to businesses. Among the companies indicted there are no Italian ones, but there are the brewer Ab InBev, chemical giant Basf, oil company BP, Belgian public telephone company Belgacom. And in the meantime, Commissioner Vestager is still investigating other alleged tax advantages offered to giants such as Apple in Ireland, Amazon and Mc Donald's in Luxembourg.
