Speaking at the G20 summit of world leaders, Mr Juncker added that ruling was not “a decision against the US”.
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EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has even stated that more investigations will be launched in the coming year, so American businesses and taxpayers will remain vulnerable to tax hungry European bureaucrats.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook describe the ruling as “total political crap”, saying the bill was extortionate. The EU judges dealing with any Apple appeal would focus on whether the European Commission’s rejection of Ireland’s view of transfer pricing strays too far into dictating national tax policy.
The ruling against Apple has pushed the issue into the limelight and raised the risk of a significant push-back from the USA, said analysts, where some lawmakers are saying the result represents a European encroachment on the United States potential tax base.
Ireland plans to appeal against the ruling.
The Labour Party says Ireland needs a minimum rate of effective tax for all companies and it wants to see a commission on taxation set up. This has led to USA companies keeping more than $2 trillion overseas to avoid paying the US tax. By playing governments off against each other and employing battalions of lawyers and lobbyists to squeeze its tax bill down to nearly zero, the company chips away at society’s ability to pay for everything from education to infrastructure. Washington has imposed import duties of up to 500 percent on Chinese steel to offset what regulators say are improper subsidies.
“Free trade must be fair trade”, Juncker said at a news conference with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council. “We are basing our decisions on facts and the legislation that applies here”.
But after a three-year investigation, Brussels said the arrangement with Apple had broken European Union laws on state aid.
A US Treasury spokesperson previously told Bloomberg in a statement: ‘We believe that retroactive tax assessments by the commission are unfair, contrary to well-established legal principles, and call into question the tax rules of individual Member States.
You wouldn’t think we’d be taking sides against a cool, innovative, imaginative tech corporation, Apple Inc., and standing with one of the world’s most opaque bureaucracies, the European Commission. “Ireland’s low 12.5pc corporate tax rate, and its high human development and governance indicators should keep the business environment attractive to multinationals, and the costs of relocating would be large”.
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The two leaders tried to downplay the impact on U.S.
