“We haven’t done anything wrong, and the Irish government hasn’t done anything wrong”.
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After a two-year investigation triggered by a U.S. Senate probe, European Union officials on Tuesday said Apple had struck an illegal deal with Ireland that allowed the technology giant to pay nearly no taxes from 2003 to 2014 on profits for sales throughout the 28-nation region.
“We have concluded that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to 13 billion euros to Apple”.
The commission’s ruling was a “fair warning” that he supported, Stiglitz told CNBC.
She said Apple’s sweetheart tax deal with Ireland amount to “illegal state aid”.
Jack Lew, the US Treasury Secretary, spoke out against the Commission’s ruling, saying “I have been concerned that it reflected an attempt to reach into the USA tax base to tax income that ought to be taxed in the United States”.
Vestager claimed that arrangements between Ireland and Apple ensured that in 2014, Apple paid corporate tax at an effective rate of 0.005 per cent in 2014, or just €50 on every €1,000,000 in profit.
Apple was found to be holding over US$181 billion in accumulated profits offshore, more than any USA company, in a study published past year by two left-leaning nonprofit groups, a policy critics say is created to avoid paying U.S taxes. “This is a decision based on the facts of the case”, she said.
Although both Apple and the Irish government are expected to appeal the ruling, the company will still have to deposit the money in an escrow account – something Cook confirmed in his interview.
The EU’s most powerful business regulator has dismissed accusations of political bias from Apple chief Tim Cook. “What Ireland was doing was harming other countries”, he told CNBC. “In fact, the tax treatment in Ireland enabled Apple to avoid taxation on nearly all profits generated by sales of Apple products in the entire EU Single Market”. Unfortunately it’s one of those things we have to work through.
Apple is also going to appeal the ruling in the European courts.
If it was up to me, the non-confidential version of the decision would have been published yesterday, because that is another way of enabling everyone to see what we have decided and on what basis we have made this decision. As it increased its presence in the country creating more jobs for the locals, the Irish government allegedly allowed it to pay low corporate tax rates on those profits.
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“Ireland and Apple have acted not only in the law, but did what was right”.
