The European Parliament’s special committee on tax rulings on Monday approved its final report, which will be released to the public sometime this week.
There were 34 votes for the report, 3 against, and 7 abstentions. A total of 1047 amendments were tabled to a draft version of the report, prepared by co-rapporteurs Elisa Ferreira of Portugal and Michael Theurer of Germany.
A plenary vote on the recommendations is scheduled for the last week of November.
Also, several multinationals have been invited to publicly share their views on the matter with the Committee at a hearing scheduled for November 16. So far, HSBC, Google, and Facebook have agreed to appear. The Committee intends to publish the responses of multinationals that decline their invitation to attend.
According to a Committee release, the report concludes that the recent ECOFIN agreement on exchange of tax ruling information should be extended to give the EU Commission access to the ruling information so it can investigate for state aid violations. Theurer said at a press conference that the ECOFIN agreement was unacceptably watered down. “It has more holes in it than . . . Dutch cheese,” he quipped.
The MEPs also support EU-wide rules providing for a mandatory common consolidated corporate tax base and for country-by-country reporting. They also call for better protection of whistleblowers, noting that Antoine Deltour still faces charges in Luxembourg for the “Luxleaks” revelations.
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