“Ireland did not give favorable tax treatment to Apple”.
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While Ireland doesn’t want the money, the US government would gladly take it, and even feels as though it is entitled to it, according to Reuters.
“You can not change the rules of the game through ad hoc state aid enforcement, and then seek retroactive recovery for unpaid taxes”, Kroes wrote.
On Wednesday, the cabinet meeting was adjourned until Friday because several independent ministers asked for more time to study the Apple tax ruling before deciding whether to back the appeal process. “No one did anything wrong here and we need to stand together”.
Apple has already said it will lodge an appeal.
The company reported in 2014 an effective tax rate of 26.1% on its world-wide profit, including the foreign tax provisions that are unpaid, a level Mr. Cook described as “reasonable”. The United States can bring back the profits from its global sales back to the United States at any point, but when it does, it will have to pay the 35 percent tax.
The battle lines are forming on both sides of the Atlantic. The commission calls the Ireland-Apple relationship, based on the tax benefit, “illegal state aid”, disadvantaging Apple’s competition. “Apple now has to repay the benefits”, Vestager told a news conference. For that reason, USA companies have left an estimated $2 trillion in untaxed foreign profits overseas.
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel also supported the Commission on Tuesday.
“Bowing to the commission’s ruling would.be a tacit acknowledgement that there has indeed been something rotten in the low-tax regime that Dublin operates to attract multinationals”, it said.
The Labour Party and Fianna Fáil have come out in support of an appeal against the judgement while Sinn Féin, Anti-Austerity Alliance, The Social Democrats and The Green Party are backing the initial European Union ruling.
Independent ministers failed to break a deadlock yesterday with their government colleagues, who strongly back a challenge in the European courts. Vestager said the findings arose from figures provided by Apple itself, as well as details which emerged during US Senate hearings into Apple in 2013.
The decision followed three days of talks between ministers from the right-of-center Fine Gael party, which leads the government, and a ministers from the Independent Alliance, a much smaller grouping.
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The Commission, he wrote, “is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been”.
