Global Tax Principles [1]
Our Purpose
We pioneer solutions to the world's water and climate challenges and improve quality of life for people.
Our Values
Everything we do is guided by our Values: sustainable, open and trustworthy, focused on people, independent, partnership and relentlessly ambitious. These values enable us to have confidence that we can achieve long-term, sustainable growth.
Our Group Policies
The Grundfos Group Policies state:
“As regards to tax, Grundfos runs its business responsibly and plays an active role in society. This means that Grundfos will act as a responsible citizen and will strive to ensure a fair and reasonable allocation of the group profit in the jurisdictions/communities where Grundfos is present as well as being in compliance both for direct and indirect taxes.”
Our Tax Principles
In line with our Purpose, Values and Group Policies, we apply the following principles globally as well as locally:
1. We ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations;
2. We have an open and transparent dialogue with the tax authorities and seek predictability in tax positions and engage in dialogue with relevant stakeholders on tax matters;
3. We maintain an internal tax function with the necessary professional skills ensuring tax compliance;
4. We train our broader organisation to work in line with our Code of Conduct supporting tax compliance;
5. We maintain processes and systems to support that we are tax compliant;
6. Transactions within the Group are undertaken on an arm’s length basis and in accordance with applicable OECD principles. We seek to reduce the risk of double taxation;
7. We consider tax as a factor – among others – when making business decisions and will only operate in tax havens for commercial reasons[2];
8. We evaluate the opportunities for incentives and reliefs offered by the authorities to support economic development;
9. We actively identify material uncertain tax positions and manage these based on a structured risk assessment;
10. Where there is complexity or uncertainty in relation to particular tax risks we may collaborate with external professional advisors.
Governance
The Audit Committee on behalf of the Board of Directors has approved these global tax principles 24 August 2020 and oversees the management of taxes globally.
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[1] The assertions made in this statement apply across all of the jurisdictions in which we operate, including the UK. In particular, we regard this statement as satisfying our specific UK disclosure obligation under Schedule 19 of FA16.
[2] Grundfos does not operate in tax havens based on EU and OECD lists of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions.
