Reacting to revelations published today in a number of leading European newspapers, that many of Luxembourg’s accounting and law firms allegedly found a new loophole for big multinationals to circumvent European rules on administrative cooperation (DAC3)* to drastically lower their tax payments, Aurore Lalucq, S&D MEP and spokesperson on tax matters, said:

“I was shocked by this latest episode in the never-ending saga of big corporations abusing loopholes in the EU’s tax system with the help of prestigious accounting firms. These latest revelations come after the LuxLeaks investigations in 2015 uncovered tax evasion and avoidance schemes on an industrial scheme. The minimum corporate tax rate will be a sharp weapon against such tax dodging by corporations and the beggar thy neighbour attitude of some countries. It is high time to finally put a floor to tax competition between countries and end the free-riding of rich individuals and companies at the expense of society.

“My group will request a hearing on this latest LuxLetters scandal in the tax matters committee to really get to the bottom of things. We want to know if the Luxemburgish authorities informed other EU countries about these letters, which effectively enabled multinationals to escape paying their fair share of taxes where they made their profits.”

Jonas Fernandez, S&D MEP and spokesperson for economic and monetary affairs, said:

“In the light of such serious allegations, we call on the Commission to investigate if these letters are in breach of European rules establishing the cooperation between tax administrations. If that is indeed the case, not only EU law was broken, but also the mutual trust EU countries place in each other.”