Which companies can’t get support from EU?
Tax-dodging corporations with outposts in offshore havens risk being left high and dry when European nations hand out vast bailouts to companies devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
A growing number of countries said they may exclude companies based in the Cayman Islands, Panama, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other states on a European Union blacklist of “non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax.”
Upholding its Nordic reputation for fair play, Denmark has taken the lead, prompting politicians across the 27-nation EU to call for similar action as public impatience grows over rescues going to tax-dodging companies.
“You cannot ask the Danish society for help one day only to turn your back on the community the next and send your money to a country on the EU’s list of tax havens,” the Nordic nation’s Business Minister Simon Kollerup said in an email. “It is simply not fair.”
From manufacturing to banking, the use of havens has become a central — and legal — part of business models. But the debate is now echoing Europe’s response to the sovereign debt crisis: the more governments open up public purse strings, the more pressing the questions they face about who gets bailed out by taxpayers.
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