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Sorry, I didn't make my point clear enough. Amazon does provide services from Luxembourg which would be fine if that's where they are actually based at. As far
by germanier 9y ago
Sorry, I didn't make my point clear enough. Amazon does provide services from Luxembourg which would be fine if that's where they are actually based at. As far as I know they have some lawyers there but that's about their presence (which is what I meant with "mailbox only"). The actual service is peovided somewhere else. Making it possible to exploit that is definitely not the point of EU freedoms. I provided an example that illustrates EU freedoms working how they are supposed to be in a cousin comment.
And yes, Amazon operates in Germany. They have engineering offices, customer service, and warehouses all located in Germany. Every company from Luxembourg should be able to. But taxing income derived from that is still possible under EU rules (and actually done).
- peoplewindow 9y agoThe EU corporate tax regime was specifically set up (by Fritz Bolkerstein) to tax companies where they are registered, not where they nebulously "provide services", something you can't define and nor can the EU. That's exactly because the EU was meant to encourage businesses to move around the continent and set up wherever was more convenient for them. Of course in recent years the EU got cold feet on the whole "four freedoms". Services never really happened. Capital is a joke - France and Germany ban foreign investments all the time and Greece had capital controls within recent memory. It's only migration the EU is really, really keen on, probably because that's the one that suits their political objectives the best.