Online bookstore Amazon faces an investigation into its tax affairs in Europe after EU officials announced on Tuesday that they will probe whether the US firm breached competition law.<br /><br />The European Commission says the set-up that the US firm has in place in Luxembourg could amount to a violation of the bloc’s anti-trust rules.<br /><br />“The ruling we’re looking to in this case concerns Amazon’s subsidiary in Luxembourg, which records most of the group’s European profit,” said Joaquin Almunia, EU competition commissioner.<br /><br />“Most European profits of amazon are recorded in Luxembourg, but are not taxed in this country,” he told journalists in Brussels.<br /><br />Amazon’s European HQ is based in the tiny EU nation. It is accused of choosing that location to unfairly lighten its fiscal burden.<br /><br />This EU investigation follows similar probes into the fiscal affairs of Apple and Starbucks, two other US multinationals.
