The commission on Tuesday ordered that Apple to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes after it decided that the country had granted the tech company unfair state aid that violated European Union regulations.
Advertisement
“When you are accused of something that is so foreign to your values, it brings out an outrage in you”.
“I’m pretty confident that the [Irish] Government will do the right thing”.
Mr Cook said that in 2014 his company paid one of every 15 U.S. dollars of corporation tax in Ireland.
In a separate interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Cook branded Ms Vestager’s ruling “political crap”.
“They just picked a number from I don’t know where”, the Apple CEO told the Irish Independent.
“We provisioned several billion dollars for the USA for payment as soon as we repatriate it, and right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year”, Mr. Cook said in the interview.
Earlier this week, Apple found itself in the midst of yet another tax scandal. 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.
Cook, who announced further expansion plans in Cork, said he would “love” to see the Irish government appeal. We believe these changes should come about through the proper legislative process, in which proposals are discussed among the leaders and citizens of the affected countries.
The Irish government has already indicated it will appeal Tuesday’s European Commission ruling that Ireland granted illegal state aid to the company. “Ireland is being picked on and this is unacceptable”, Cook said. “I can recognise that people might hear that figure and think it should be higher, others might think it should be lower, others might think that it’s about right but should be paid to different countries, or allocated better”.
The timing of Europe’s decision, ahead of the US presidential election in November, means tax reform may become a more prominent issue. Two subsidiaries of Apple that is based in Ireland called Apple Operations Europe and Apple Sales International paid over most of their profits to a certain head office.
‘The commission’s actions could threaten to undermine foreign investment, the business climate in Europe, and the important spirit of economic partnership between the USA and the European Union’. “We paid $400 million in taxes in 2014”.
Advertisement
The case may take as much as five years before it is completely settled, Dublin law firm McCann FitzGerald said in a report.
