Tax authorities demand hundreds of millions from Delhaize

The Belgian tax authorities are demanding an amount of up to 380 million euros from Ahold Delhaize, the parent company of Delhaize, Albert Heijn and Bol.com. That writes De Tijd on Wednesday. The conflict revolves around how Ahold Delhaize acquired the American stores of its Belgian subsidiary Delhaize in 2018.

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In 2016, Ahold acquired the Delhaize group, which until then had been an independent Belgian supermarket group that also had stores in Eastern Europe and the United States. In the years that followed, Ahold integrated the Belgian organization into its structure to exploit synergies and boost its profits. For this reason, the American Delhaize stores – operating under the name Food Lion and Hannaford – had to move to the companies with which Ahold managed its own American chains.

To make this possible, Delhaize sold its American stores to Ahold Delhaize. Although the Dutch are the full owners of the Belgian company, they say they aimed for a fair price for the ‘Belgian’ American stores. They called on an external organization to calculate how much the stores were worth. This led to an acquisition price on which the companies did not have to pay taxes.

The Belgian tax authorities referred the external valuation report of Ahold Delhaize to the wastepaper basket. American stores are worth more according to Belgian taxes than the Dutch paid for them.

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