EU in new tax deals probe

European Union antitrust regulators have opened a probe into tax deals granted by Luxembourg to French electric utility company Engie, which they consider to have given the company an unfair advantage over others.

The European Commission said it had concerns that the tax rulings granted by Luxembourg since 2008 appeared to treat the same financial transaction as both debt and equity, leading to double non-taxation of companies in the GDF Suez group, as Engie was formerly known.

“Financial transactions can be taxed differently depending on the type of transaction, equity or debt - but a single company cannot have the best of two worlds for one and the same transaction,” Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commissioner, said in a statement.