Abstract
The European Commission recently announced a competition policy of what might be called “small business tax neutrality” in several of its state aid rulings. Simply put, states may not grant tax benefits that create a tax advantage to multinational firms in comparison to SME´s. As explained in detail here, the United States is engaged in tax competition yielding a structural advantage in favor of U.S. multinationals against European SME’s including by facilitating the avoidance of European tax, which also notably reduces the foreign tax credit offset upon repatriation of earnings to the United States. Also, U.S. tax laws grant U.S. multinationals tax incentives on U.S. earnings including special incentives for R&D and domestic manufacturing which are incremental to the lax enforcement of U.S. tax laws on corporate audits especially with respect to transfer pricing. The anti-competitive effect is that U.S. multinationals enjoy a significant trade advantage against their competitors of all stripes and are able to seize market share from European SME’s (just as also occurred in U.S. domestic markets where SME’s were eliminated as competition in the U.S. domestic markets over the past decade). Several policy options are provided herein to reduce the competitive advantage of U.S. multinationals in the respective European markets and particularly with respect to European SME´s.