Multinational firm in Mexico tax-avoidance probe to pay up-report

Dec 22 (Reuters) – Mexico’s tax collection agency (SAT) has reached a deal with a multinational company at the center of a tax-avoidance investigation, and the latter will make a ‘substantial’ payment soon, a senior official was quoted as saying on Monday.

“We have just closed a case with an iconic company,” Oscar Molina, who audits large companies at SAT, told Mexican newspaper El Universal.

“The taxpayer ultimately accepted the regularization of its fiscal situation, and we’ll receive a payment it has to make in the next few days and which will be substantial,” Molina said.

Molina did not name the company, but Reuters reported in September that the world’s No. 2 toymaker Hasbro, along with household product maker Procter & Gamble, were at the heart of the tax probe.

An SAT spokesman declined to comment on the report. Officials at Hasbro and Procter & Gamble also had no immediate comment.

Molina did not say how much the company would have to pay, but the newspaper cited him as saying the sum would be equivalent to 55 percent of the company’s sales in a fiscal year.

Mexico said in January it had launched an investigation of 270 companies for allegedly exploiting tax loopholes that have leaked income out of Mexico for years. (Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Bernadette Baum)