Responding to Cook’s comments, European Union competition chief Margrethe Vestager called on Apple and Ireland to allow the release of the details of the confidential ruling. He said the decision was “political crap”. In the year that the commission says we paid that tax figure, we actually paid $400m. “They just picked a number from I don’t know where”.
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White House spokesman Josh Earnest said US taxpayers could ultimately bear the brunt of the decision, if Apple is forced to make the payment, because the company then could deduct the billions it pays Ireland from the USA taxes it owes.
“It’s maddening, it’s disappointing, it’s clear that this comes from a political place, it has no basis in fact or in law, and unfortunately it’s one of those things we have to work through”.
“When you’re accused of doing something that is so foreign to your values, it brings out outrage in you”.
Margrethe Vestage, the top competition official for the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said the deal amounted to illegal state aid to Apple from Ireland.
The EC has said that the payments were avoided as part of a subsidy for Apple from the Irish government, provided as an inducement to persuade the company to invest in the country.
The European Commission rejected on Thursday Apple’s criticism that an EU order to the company to pay back taxes to Ireland was political, noting the calculations were based on facts and Apple’s own data.
“We paid 400 (million dollars) to Ireland, we paid 400 to the United States and we provisioned several billion dollars for the USA for payment as soon as we repatriate it and right now I forecast that repatriation to occur next year”, Cook said in comments broadcast by RTE.
Vestager said Apple had improperly routed taxable income to a head office that only existed on paper and could not have generated such profits. Tax breaks from Luxembourg for Amazon.com Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. are also under investigation.
“It’s sort of like playing a sports game, winning a championship and later finding out that the goals count differently than you thought they did”, Cook told RTE News.
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Apple has said it will appeal the ruling which Cook attacked in an interview with the Irish Independent. Ireland essentially allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax than other companies. “We haven’t done anything wrong and the Irish government hasn’t done anything wrong”.
