However, the Independent Alliance, a group of five lawmakers, has said it wants its senior coalition partners to commit to reviewing how tax is collected from Ireland’s large cluster of multinational companies before it considers a challenge.
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Apple investors in the United States are watching this closely because right now most of the company’s profit is stashed overseas, making it harder for the company to pay dividends, buy back stock and acquire U.S. companies. Back in the 1960s, Ireland, then the poorest country in Europe, began offering global companies low taxes and cash grants as an incentive to invest and create jobs.
The U.S. government is keen to ensure that it, and not Ireland, gets the revenue.
The ruling by a Brussels competition watchdog – described by Finance Minister Michael Noonan as weird and outrageous – found Ireland gave Apple a sweetheart deal which ultimately allowed the iPhone maker to pay 0.005% tax in 2014 – 50 euro for every one million of profit.
The Independent Alliance grouping has yet to finalise its position on the European Commission decision ordering Ireland to recoup up to €13 billion in back taxes from the tech firm.
The Danish EU official said that her findings were based “on the facts of the case”.
The European Commission’s top antitrust enforcer on Friday defended the regulator’s ruling against Apple (AAPL) and use of the European Union’s state aid rules to go after corporate tax dodgers. Apple said it would appeal the decision. A number of countries have moved to implement some of them measures, but the United States has not.
In the Apple case, and several others, the Commission has been investigating whether member countries’ tax authorities were secretly giving tax breaks by being too generous in their application of accepted tax principles.
Ireland needs to decide whether to appeal the ruling to take 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in taxes from the U.S. tech giant, with growing public pressure to use the money to ease the pain of years of austerity. The UK declined comment. Still, one of those politicians, John Halligan, said on Thursday that the issue shouldn’t destabilize the government. “We are basing our decisions on facts and on the legislation”.
Apple and the Irish government have said they will appeal against the European Commission ruling, with the iPhone maker warning it could cost European jobs.
If the court backs the Commission, the executive would theoretically be free to challenge hundreds of other complex tax arrangements used, mainly by US companies, to minimize taxes on European sales.
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“I’m very confident that the courts will take a nonpolitical view of this and come to the right decision”, he said.
