In a separate interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Cook branded Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s ruling “political crap”.
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Earlier this week the EC said existing arrangements struck between Dublin and Apple broke European rules on state aid.
The Irish government plans to contest the ruling and Apple CEO Tim Cook has condemned the commission’s decision, saying it could risk investment and job creation in Europe.
“Apple has always been about doing the right thing, never the easy thing”.
One of those lawmakers, John Halligan, said parliament should be recalled to discuss an appeal of the decision.
The result was that Apple paid an effective corporate tax rate that declined from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014 on the profits of Apple Sales International.
He said: “It’s total political c**p”.
“There are other possibilities too, but I think it’s clear that there is a desire to harmonize tax rates across the EU”. The reason for all that, Apple says, is not because of how much tax Apple pays, but “about which government collects the money”. That deal allowed the company to record all sales in Ireland rather than “in the countries where the products were sold”. While Ireland’s finance minister has said he wishes to appeal, the country’s governing coalition is reportedly split on the matter and will meet soon to come to a decision.
“When you’re accused of doing something so foreign to your values it brings out an outrage in you”, he said.
In addition, we paid $400 million of current United States taxes on those profits, bringing total current taxes paid to $800 million. But what I feel strongly about is that this decision was politically based, of that I’m very confident. Republican nominee Donald Trump has proposed taxing companies’ accumulated offshore profit at 10 percent, compared with the current top corporate rate of 35 percent.
Besides Apple, European Union regulators have been scrutinizing the tax arrangements between its member countries and several US companies such as Amazon, Google and McDonald’s. Cook said he would fight closely with Ireland to overturn the ruling wherein Apple has been asked to pay Ireland 13 billion euros in back taxes.
The European Commission, which administer EU law, said that the Irish government had granted illegal state aid to Apple by helping it to artificially lower its tax bill for more than 20 years.
“It has not been diminished one iota, we are completely committed to Ireland”. The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation a proposed telecommunications joint venture between Hutchison and VimpelCom in Italy.
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Prior to the decision, both Lew and USA legislators said that these cases call into question “bilateral tax treaties negotiated with EU Member States”, and that the cases “could undermine US tax treaties with EU Member States”.
