EU: Vestager examines Facebook over taxes

According to a report from Politico, EC Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is weighing up whether there are grounds to open a probe into Facebook’s European tax arrangements as the Commission deepens its multinational investigation into sweetheart tax deals.

Vestager stressed that her work on taxes is unfinished, and two people close to the work of the competition investigators said that they had now turned their attention to Facebook’s arrangements. A third person agreed that the Commission was looking into these, but predicted that Vestager’s team would not find enough to open a formal investigation into the social networking giant.

At a press conference at the Web Summit in Lisbon on Wednesday, November 7,  Vestager was asked whether her department was specifically looking into an Irish arrangement that allows investors to lower their tax burden by offsetting costs from intellectual property assets they have acquired.

“We continue to ask questions. We’re asking Member States for evidence of tax rulings about specific cases,” she said. “So far, we have no specific criticism of any legislation from the Irish Republic.”

Vestager and the Commission ruled in 2016 that Ireland would have to collect €13 billion (US$ billion)in unpaid taxes from Apple.