Ireland to appeal against Apple’s $14.5 million European Union tax bill

However, speaking on Sunday at the start of the G20 summit, the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Juncker rejected the idea that European authorities were unjustly singling out USA companies and said the ruling was “clearly based on facts”.

Juncker said EC investigations on taxation had mainly targeted European companies.

His comments came after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had also stressed that last week’s ruling was fact-based and not politically motivated, but also after the chief executive of the IDA, Martin Shanahan, said it placed Ireland in the position of collector-general for the world, and that this was unhelpful.

Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for competition, said the sweetheart deal had enabled Apple to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years.

Last week, European Union antitrust regulators ordered Apple to pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes to the Irish government after ruling that a special scheme to route profits through Ireland was illegal state aid.

Sounding a defiant note ahead of the Group of 20 summit, Juncker told reporters that the decisions had been based on “facts and on the legislation”, saying that it would be “absurd” to use taxation as a means to attack the United States, according to AFP. Ireland announced it had chose to appeal the ruling on Friday, after finance minister Michael Noonan said he disagreed “profoundly” with the verdict, while Apple boss Tim Cook dubbed the decision “total political crap”.

Some lawyers say the Commission’s rulings will prompt a major spat with the United States.

“They just picked a number from I don’t know where”, Cook said after Tuesday’s announcement. “We are basing our decisions on facts and on the legislation”. No one did anything wrong here and we need to stand together.

Labour finance spokesperson Joan Burton has said her party will table three amendments to the Government motion on appealing the EU’s Apple ruling.

France and Germany have spoken out in support of the decision.