She said Apple’s sweetheart tax deal with Ireland constituted illegal state aid.
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Ireland’s minister for finance, Michael Noonan, “disagrees profoundly” with the Commission’s ruling and is seeking the Irish Cabinet’s approval to appeal the decision.
In two interviews with Irish media, Cook said Apple has done nothing wrong and was confident European courts would overturn the ruling on appeal.
And despite suggestions earlier in the week that the ruling might damage inward investment into the EU, Cook was keen to assert that the company would continue investing in Ireland.
He said Apple paid income tax on products sold in different European countries to those countries, and an additional income taxes on profits in the USA at a rate of 35%. No-one did anything wrong here and we need to stand together. “Ireland is being picked on and this is unacceptable”, Cook told the newspaper.
In a separate interview with the Irish Independent, Mr Cook branded Ms Vestager’s ruling “political crap”.
Apple paid taxes at the 12.5% rate – a total of $400 million – in 2014, he said. 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. I’m convinced that would be crystal clear to anyone looking at this from an unbiased point of view”, Cook said on the radio. Amazon and McDonald’s both have cases pending with the Commission over potentially underpaying taxes as well. He also said the commission was rewriting Apple’s record in Ireland, overriding Irish law and disrupting the worldwide tax system.
“Ireland and Apple have acted not only in the law, but did what was right”.
The Commission’s investigation found that Apple paid an effective corporate tax rate of one per cent on European profits in 2003, falling to 0.005 per cent in 2014.
We can agree too that Apple’s cosy European Union arrangements should never have been permitted. The Irish tax authority has also disputed the ruling.
All of Apple’s business outside of the Americas is conducted through Ireland, which has the second-lowest corporate tax rate in Europe.
But the actual payment of those taxes is deferred – till when, nobody knows. Many executives, including Apple, have said that rate is unfair.
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“The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the worldwide tax system in the process”, the company said.
