Apple told to pay up to $14.5bn in Irish taxes

 

The European Commission has estimated that Apple has to pay 13bn euros ($14.5bn) in retroactive taxes to Ireland after an in-depth state aid investigation.

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The 130-page ruling by EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager follows a three-year probe into Apple's Irish tax affairs.
It establishes that Ireland violated EU law on competition by giving Apple tax benefits which are not available to other companies.
"The European Commission has concluded that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13 billion to Apple," reads the ruling. "This is illegal under EU state aid rules, because it allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax than other businesses. Ireland must now recover the illegal aid."
Those advantages - which amount to "illegal state aid", according to the ruling -  were made during a ruling made by the Irish government in 1991 and 2007.
According to Commissioner Vestager,  Apple only paid "an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014".
Irish corporate tax is at 12.5 per cent.
Apple and Ireland deny any wrongdoing and will likely appeal against the ruling.
The US tech giant employs 6,000 people in Ireland, mostly at its main site in Cork.