European officials investigating whether Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and other companies received sweetheart tax deals from Ireland and Luxembourg will not take action as soon as expected, EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday.
Vestager has proceeded with alacrity since taking over in November last year. She has already announced formal antitrust charges against Google Inc and Russian energy giant Gazprom; the companies could face huge fines and orders to change their business practices.
However, Vestager said she was no longer on track to make a decision by late spring in the tax cases, which include an inquiry into Starbucks Corp and a unit of the car company Fiat SpA.
There was “an ambition to do all four cases before the end of the second quarter,” Vestager said after giving testimony at the European Parliament to a committee looking into tax issues. “It is now obvious, with the problems that we have been having to get information, this is not possible.”
Another reason for the delay is to avoid making “speed too high a priority,” Vestager said.
Proceeding too rapidly could turned into criticism of how cases are managed, she added.
Vestager did not a set a new deadline for action.
The tax cases are different from the Google and Gazprom investigations because they are not based on antitrust regulations, but on laws aimed at curbing national subsidies that would give a member state an advantage in attracting investors.
Unlike in antitrust cases, companies found to have received such aid do not face fines or a finding of wrongdoing. Instead, the European Commission would impose an order on the nation that granted the aid.
Apple could be required to pay back huge sums to Dublin, while Amazon and Fiat could have to make payments to Luxembourg. A ruling against the Netherlands would leave the government facing an order to collect large sums from Starbucks.
“There is no deadline, but we will get there, of course,” she said. “Fast is always better than slow, but it is always best to be just.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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