European court ruling will force Apple to pay 13 billion Euro tax bill
European court ruling will force Apple to pay 13 billion Euro tax bill
Published: 30th August 2016 | Source: EU Court Ruling |
European court ruling will force Apple to pay €13 billion Euro tax bill
Large companies often have a very unclear corporate structure, which are designed to be deliberately vague and set up companies to pay significantly less tax by funnelling profits through a region which has lower tax rates.
Today the European Commission has delivered a report which has found that Apple has gotten out of paying €13 billion in taxes by setting up illegal tax agreements that had Apple paying 1% tax on profits in 2003 and as little as 0.005% in 2014.
Using this deal Apple then attributes most of their EU profits to their Dublin-based subsidiary, allowing the company to pay almost no taxes on their European profits. The EU Commission found that their Dublin "head offices" only existed on paper and that they could not have generated such huge profits.
EU commissioner Margrethe Vestager, the head of European competition policy has given the below statement, saying that Ireland's actions were illegal under EU law and allowed Apple to pay significantly less tax than what they should have.
Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules.
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. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014.
In this case, both the Irish government and Apple itself are at fault, with Ireland securing tax income by creating illegal tax deals and Apple taking full advantage of this deal by moving all of their profits to Ireland, effectively taking €13 Euro in taxes (roughly £11.1 Billion) from EU countries.
Now Ireland must recover all lost taxes from between 2003 and 2014, including interest, though at this time we do not know exactly how the Irish Government will be punished for their illegal actions.
You can read the full European Commission press release here.
You can join the discussion on Apple's 13 Billion Euro tax bill on the OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
The only reason they are here is because of the taxQuote
|
Originally Posted by Ciaran
Lol you realise ireland has prob gotten more than that 13 billion from apple over the years they have been here and they are still expanding in ireland...
The only reason they are here is because of the tax |
Dirt dodging buggers !Quote
|
Originally Posted by Ciaran
Lol you realise ireland has prob gotten more than that 13 billion from apple over the years they have been here and they are still expanding in ireland...
The only reason they are here is because of the tax |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqsSyD5H9b8
IRS: Where are you incorporated? You should pay taxes there.
Apple: In Ireland.
Irish tax service: Where is your managing team in? You should pay taxes there.
Apple: In the U.S.Quote
Glad that they got done. These corporations that use tax avoiding measures should get more than just fines. There needs to be some other deterrent like get caught and pay more taxes for the next 5 years or something.Quote
CSS Valid
The horror Apple will suffer........Ah well, at least the back of their sofa will help them out!Quote