After a three-year investigation, the Commission said Ireland had empowered Apple to pay substantially less than other businesses, in effect paying a corporate tax rate of no longer than 1%.
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Cook said Apple was committed to expanding its operations in Ireland despite the ruling. “There should be a public discussion about it”, he said. “It’s not accurate. In that year, we paid $400m to Ireland, and that amount of money was predicated on the statutory Irish income tax rate of 12.5%”.
On Tuesday, the commission slapped Apple with a $14.5 billion tax bill, saying the company had paid an effective tax rate that was at times as low as 0.005 percent over the past decade.
Controversy has raged across the country on whether to pursue the unpaid tax and risk the wrath of multinationals, which the Irish economy depends heavily upon, or to fight the European Union finding.
The Government still has not decided if it will appeal the Apple ruling.
The Irish cabinet met on Wednesday (31 August) to discuss the issue but failed to agree a position and will meet again on Friday to decide whether to appeal against the commission’s decision. The senators proposed that the code would allow the U.S.to “impose a double rate of tax on citizens and corporations of foreign countries engaging in discriminatory taxation”.
In an interview on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland this morning, Cook described the ruling as “maddening and disappointing”.
By contrast, Cook estimated Apple’s average annual tax on its global profits at 26 percent. He referred to the 0.005 per cent tax rated quoted by the Commission as a “false number”.
Apple has been accused of an illegal deal by basing a headquarters here to take advantage of our low corporate tax rate.
The Commission found that “almost all sales profits recorded by the two companies” were attributed to a head office that “existed only on paper and could not have generated such profits”.
Apple employs 5,500 people in the Republic of Ireland and has plans to expand its major European hub on the outskirts of Cork, adding an additional 1,000 employees by 2017.
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“The European Commission has started an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, discount Ireland’s tax laws and upend the worldwide tax system in the act”, the company said. “They do such incredible work for Apple and we’re moving forward with the planned investments”, he said.
