Report: EU Orders Amazon to Pay Nearly $300 Million for ‘Illegal Tax Advantage’

The European Union has ordered Amazon to pay nearly $300 million over an alleged “illegal tax advantage,” according to a report.

According to the European Commission, Amazon, which was ordered to pay $294 million, “received tax advantages between 2006 and 2014 in the country without any ‘valid justification,'” while “in the period investigated, Amazon was shifting its profits from a company that was subject to tax in Luxembourg to another one that wasn’t subject to tax, known as the ‘holding company,'” according to CNBC.

The company that the profits were moved to reportedly “had no employees, no offices and no business activities.” A spokesperson for Amazon reached out to Breitbart, noting the company has “1,500 employees in Luxembourg.”

In a statement, the European Union’s Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, claimed Amazon was able to “pay four times less tax” than other companies.

“Luxembourg gave illegal tax benefits to Amazon. As a result, almost three-quarters of Amazon’s profits were not taxed,” Vestager explained. “In other words, Amazon was allowed to pay four times less tax than other local companies subject to the same national tax rules.”

“This is illegal under EU state aid rules,” she continued, adding, “Member states cannot give selective tax benefits to multinational groups that are not available to others.”

In response, Amazon claimed the company had acted in “full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law.”

“We will study the Commission’s ruling and consider our legal options, including an appeal,” the company declared in a statement. “Our 50,000 employees across Europe remain heads-down focused on serving our customers and the hundreds of thousands of small businesses who work with us.”

In June, the EU fined Google $2.7 billion in an anti-trust case, which was reported to be the biggest fine of its nature given to a single company.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from an Amazon representative on the number of employees in Luxembourg.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.