The Luxembourg authorities have said they will hand over a list of the hundreds of tax deals signed with some of the world’s largest multinational businesses after initially promising to take the European Commission to court in a bid to keep the tax agreements secret
Prime minister Xavier Bettel said Luxembourg would comply with the commission’s demands to reveal what tax deals were signed between 2010 and 2013 after the EU widened its request to include all member states earlier this week. It will also reveal information about beneficiaries of its patent box schemes.
Bettel said: ‘If the rules are the same for everyone, we are really not in opposition to them.’
The Commission has been gathering information on tax rulings from several member states, including Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium, since June 2013. In mid December, it confirmed that it had extended this enquiry to all member states.
Initially, Luxembourg refused to comply with requests for information on the tax ruling and the patent box enquiry. On the tax ruling system, Luxembourg provided general information but did not give a specific overview of rulings made in 2010, 2011 and 2012. It also refused to deliver certain information on the us=e of its patent box scheme, including details of the 100 largest companies falling under the regime.
Bettel said that Luxembourg was now showing a ‘constructive and active spirit’ with regard to tax affairs because it had been assured that its new drive for transparency would be part of a Europe-wide effort.
The pressure has been intensified with the revelations from the Lux Leaks, highlighting the nature of 100s of agreements negotiated by Big Four firms on behalf of multinational clients to achieve favourable tax agreements.
Margrethe Vestager, EU competition commissioner, said: ‘Luxembourg will now provide the Commission with all the requested information outstanding. The Commission would then no longer need to pursue infringement action against Luxembourg.'
She added that ‘Luxembourg acknowledges the Commission's powers to investigate their general tax rulings practice under state aid rules... and has also decided to withdraw its actions against the Commission's information requests before the European courts'.
Separately, the Commission is also pursuing member states over intellectual property taxation regimes and has requested information on these arrangements from ten member states with such a regime, including the UK, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
