In a ruling that is set to anger Washington, the European Commission said the world’s most valuable company avoided tax bills on nearly all its profits in the bloc under the arrangements with the Irish government.
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Vestager said in an interview with MarketWatch that the European Union has a solid case to defend any appeal attempt.
“The Commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years”, she added.
Ireland’s minority government, which is led by Noonan’s political party Fine Gael, depends on the backing of independent lawmakers including the political group the Independent Alliance, which needs additional time to meet with Noonan, tax officials and independent experts while reviewing the decision. The European Union has served this notice after a three year investigation that it did.
“The most profound and harmful effect of this ruling will be on investment and job creation in Europe”, he said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the ruling, which he says the company will appeal, on Tuesday.
Starbucks, Amazon, and Anheuser-Busch have also been swept up in the EU’s tax avoidance crackdown.
Immeidately after the ruling was handed down, Apple issued a statement saying it will appeal. That head office existed only on paper: “It has no employees, no premises, no real activities”, she said.
Last week the European Commission denied it was targeting USA companies in particular and said that EU rules do not allow national tax authorities to give tax breaks to some companies that are not available to others.
Apple’s tax agreements in Ireland were drawn up in 1991 and again in 2007, and allowed the company to pay a significantly reduced rate of tax on profits over more than 10 years.
Mr Noonan maintains that the full amount of tax was paid and no state aid was provided.
Opinion on the government’s stance was split on the streets of Dublin where some were stunned that they would give up a potential 13 billion euro tax windfall.
Washington has made increasingly angry comments over the case in recent weeks, and on Tuesday it echoed Apple’s warnings that the tax bill could hurt the European economy.
The Apple decision may also complicate struggling EU-US talks on what would be the world’s biggest free trade deal, meant to be completed before US President Barack Obama steps down in January.
Speaking of the differing views held by members of the Independent Alliance he said: “Of course we have to realise political reality not only do we not have a Fine Gael government, but we don’t have a majority government”.
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In October Brussels ordered United States coffee giant Starbucks and Italian automaker Fiat to each repay up to 30 million euros ($34 million) in back taxes to the Netherlands and Luxembourg respectively.
