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. I have no idea where the number came from.
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Update 12.30pm: A member of the Cabinet says the European Commission has set itself up as “prosecutor, judge and executioner” in relation to the Apple tax ruling.
Cook continued to push for worldwide tax reformation but says any change should not happen retroactively, as the European Commission is attempting to act. Fortunately, the noble folk at Cupertino would help the plucky nation take on this burden.
“It’s total political crap”, the Apple CEO told the Irish Independent. “And I think that (anti-US sentiment) is one reason why we could have been targeted”. “It’s important that the government stands strong on that, because future investment from business really depends on a level of certainty … people need to know that the law will be upheld”. “Ireland is being picked on and this is unacceptable”. This was achieved by allocating profits to “head offices” which only existed on paper, according to Vestager, and had neither offices nor employees.
After a two-year investigation triggered by a U.S. Senate probe, European Union officials on Tuesday said Apple had struck an illegal deal with Ireland that allowed the technology giant to pay nearly no taxes from 2003 to 2014 on profits for sales throughout the 28-nation region. In a public letter to Apple customers on August 30, Cook wrote: “We are committed to Ireland and we plan to continue investing there, growing and serving our customers with the same level of passion and commitment”.
Apple is planning to appeal, and Cook said he hopes the Irish government will do the same.
“It has not been diminished one iota, we are completely committed to Ireland”.
Apple employs almost 6,000 people in Ireland.
Cook said Apple had paid $800 million in taxes in 2014 on profits, split roughly between Ireland and the U.S. It’s unclear also whether moving those profits back to the U.S. would reduce its Irish taxes.
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He said he would fight closely with Ireland to overturn the ruling, which he said had “no basis in law or in fact”. It found that tax rulings issued by Ireland since 1991 artificially lowered the tax paid by Apple. The commissioner said: “The Apple case is about profits made by sale in Europe so obviously it is a question of tax being paid in Europe”.
