McDonald’s Denies Tax Evasion Allegations

McDonald’s came under fire on Tuesday after allegations from the French magazine L’Express claimed the food chain was under investigation by tax authorities for failing to pay taxes on 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) of income from its 314 French locations.

The restaurant denied the allegations found in the magazine’s Wednesday edition which claimed that McDonald’s used Swiss and Luxembourg subsidiaries to pay less value added and corporate profits than it would’ve had to pay France.

“The loss for the French state is likely to be several hundred million euros,” the magazine said.

The article mentioned that French tax authorities had begun an investigation into McDonald’s main office in France in October of last year.

McDonald’s says the story is nonsense and “firmly” denied the report, claiming that the food chain complies with “applicable laws in France” and all its franchised restaurants in the country pay the country’s corporate tax.

“They have paid one billion euros in company taxes since 2009,” the company said.

With that said, the company did confirm “an information request” from French tax authorities in October