Tui Travel has agreed to pay €50 million to Spanish tax authorities in a tax evasion settlement.
This includes €30 million owed in tax on two transactions in the Balearic Islands by the group’s Spanish subsidiaries between 2001 and 2005, and a further payment of €20 million in interest and fines.
In a statement, Tui said: “The group has now accepted that in the eyes of the Spanish authorities the transactions amounted to a tax offence and has concluded that it is not in the group’s interest to further contest the matter.”
The group has already paid the tax element of the settlement. It added: “The settlement will involve a further payment of an anticipated €20 million in interest and penalties, which has been accrued for.” It will not, therefore, impact on the group’s financial results this year.
The settlement is due to be rubber-stamped at a court hearing in Palma on March 31.
The group said it had engaged “fully and openly” with the Spanish authorities and supplied “considerable documentary support and technical tax analysis” to explain the commercial and economic reasons for the way it dealt with tax on the two transactions involved. “These transactions were implemented after the group had taken specialist external advice,” added the statement.
The details of the tax investigation have been documented in the group’s last four annual reports for the year ending September 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.