EU launches probe into McDonald’s Luxembourg tax deals

Brussels: The European Union launched a probe on Thursday into US fast food giant McDonald’s tax deals with Luxembourg, widening an investigation into alleged tax dodging by major multinationals that includes Amazon and Apple.

The European Commission, the EU’s competition regulator, “has opened a formal probe into Luxembourg’s tax treatment of McDonald’s,” a statement said. “Its preliminary view is that a tax ruling granted by Luxembourg may have granted McDonald’s an advantageous tax treatment in breach of EU State aid rules,” it added.

The case against one of the world’s most iconic companies adds to a series of probes launched last year following the LuxLeaks affair, which revealed that top global companies had negotiated lower tax rates, in some cases as low as one per cent, in secret pacts with Luxembourg.