The Wall Street Journal reports that a court in the European Union has voided a 2017 European Commission ruling that Amazon owed the EU the equivalent of $300 million in taxes, giving the tech company a major win that could have implications for other companies.
Essentially, the EC maintained that Amazon cooked the books so that it appeared to have less profit than it actually had in the EU. Amazon's response was that it had paid taxes in "full accordance" with international tax law.
The Journal writes that "the decision is a significant blow to Margrethe Vestager, an executive vice president of the commission who is leading a campaign to curb alleged excesses by some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Amazon and Alphabet Inc.’s Google … The Amazon case is coming to a head as international talks aimed, at least in part, at shifting the taxation of big tech companies are making progress. Those talks, shepherded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, had been bogged down, leading several countries to impose their own unilateral taxes on big digital companies, including Amazon, over objections from technology trade groups."
- KC's View:
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Not sure this helps Amazon in the court of public opinion. But as long as it delivers on its broader value proposition to shoppers, I'm also not sure it matters.
