On Tuesday the European Commission said Ireland had effectively granted Apple billions of euros worth of undue tax benefits. For the past few years there had been an ongoing debate over European taxes.
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“They just picked a number from I don’t know where”, the Apple CEO told the Irish Independent.
She rebuffed Cook’s assertion and said the case against Apple had been based on facts.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) chief Tim Cook cranked up his outrage levels today over the EU’s US$14.5bn unpaid tax penalty.
The iPhone maker’s boss added that in 2014 Apple’s worldwide tax rate was 26.1%.
Moreover, Apple has provisioned “several billion dollars” from its profits in 2014 to be repatriated to the U.S., he said.
The Irish government also wants the ruling reversed because it can effect their low-tax base for overseas companies.
Apple now complies with Europe’s taxation laws since they changed their structure in 2015.
But in a separate radio interview he vowed to boost Apple’s tax payments by repatriating billions of dollars in global profits to the United States next year.
Of course, even such a gargantuan tax bill wouldn’t be a big stretch if Apple chose to pay. There were much more to his letter but we will need to wait and see what the ultimate decision will be.
Irish lawmakers have demanded a recall of parliament following an European Union decision on tax payments in the country by technology giant Apple. The tax savings enabled the company to avoid taxation on nearly all profits generated by sales of Apple products in the entire EU Single Market, which has been made possible by the Apple’s decision to record all sales in Ireland rather than in the countries where products are actually sold. He says the 0.005% effective tax rate bandied about by the Commission is false and “total political crap“.
The $400m claim was based on the statutory corporate tax rate in Ireland of 12.5 per cent, claimed Cook, who added that Apple’s commitment to Ireland “has not been diminished one iota” by the ruling. “Like any marriage you go through pothole here or there but we stuck together because we always felt so close to the community and the people there”. Amazon and McDonald’s both have cases pending with the Commission over potentially underpaying taxes as well.
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“We’ve got a long term romance together”, says Cook.
