amazon was slapped with a european union order to pay 250 million euros 294 mil lion plus interest in back taxes to luxembourg as the worlds biggest online retailer became the latest us giant to run afoul of the blocs tough rules on government subsidiesin another attack on sweetheart tax deals that it claims tilt the balance in favour of a select few big businesses the european commission chided luxembourg for allowing the company to cut its taxable profits to a quarter of what they were in realitythe eu authority also said its suing ireland for failing to recover a single penny of last years record 13 billioneuro bill from apple the irish finance ministry attacked the eus decision to go to court as wholly unnecessary governments cannot give selective tax benefits to multinational groups that are not available to others eu competition commissioner margret he vestager said on wednesday just over a year since she delivered her record tax bill to apple amazon was allowed to pay four times less tax than other local companies subject to the same national tax rules and this is illegal under eu stateaid ruleswhile amazons bill is far less than apples the message from vestager was just as clearits one of a growing list of cases in the eus crackdown on loopholes that started in 2013 when watchdogs started to root out deals among the thousands of otherwise legal tax pacts governments have arranged for companies for yearsat stake in all these decisions are billions of euros squirrelled away in tax havens out of the reach of authorities in the countries where they make most of their salesthe impact of a tax structure can be real and detrimental to fair competition irrespective of the technical legality of a tax scheme said richard murphy director of tax research in the uk