© Derzsi Elekes Andor“We should no longer accept that these companies do business in Europe while paying minimal amounts of tax to our treasuries,” the ministers said.
The document is part of an EU push to tap more revenues from online multinationals such as Amazon and Facebook, who are accused of paying too little tax in Europe by routing most of their profits to low-rate countries such as Ireland or Luxembourg.
The draft report, to be adopted on Thursday, said that on average brick-and-mortar multinationals pay in taxes in the EU more than twice what their digital competitors do.
Traditional large firms face a median 23.2 percent tax rate, while digital giants do not pay more than 10.1 percent - and when they sell directly to customers, rather than to firms, their effective rate goes down to 8.9 percent, data cited by the Commission showed.
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