Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Might Not Face Tax Investigations By The European Commission

0
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Might Not Face Tax Investigations By The European Commission

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) might not be facing European Union investigations into its tax deals just yet. The commission does not want to tie that probe to the investigations about the company abusing its dominant position.

Alphabet has been on the tax deals radar of the European Commission together with other companies such as which was forced to pay a huge fine of €13 billion in taxes back to Ireland. The decision of the European regulator was inspired by the fact that it is already carrying investigations on whether Alphabet has been taking advantage of its dominant position in the market.

“So far, no, we have nothing formal on that one,”explained EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager to the reporters.

Vestager stated that the Scottish National Party (SNP) has not issued a formal complaint about the company to the commission. The SNP sent a letter to the European Commission regarding Alphabet’s subsidiary Google’s back tax deal worth $160 million that the company had agreed with British tax authorities. The deal faced a lot of criticism from British politicians who believe that the amount was too little and insulting.

The antitrust chief also defended the commission regarding how slow the commission has been towards handling Google’s antitrust case. Vestager argued that the idea was to keep a tight seal on the shopping case. The first Google investigation was launched in 2010 and progress has been extremely slow.

“I am as sorry as you and everyone else that antitrust work is taking a lot of time, but it is also a sign that this is a case that is building in its strength as well as a case which is of course strictly following our procedures to make sure that also here we build up the rule of law,”stated Vestager.

Alphabet stocks closed the latest trading session at $814.17, up by $13.46 or 1.68% compared the price of the stock during the previous close. The stock had a trading volume of 1.5 million shares.