“Ireland said on Tuesday it was not to blame for Apple Inc’s low global tax payments and had no special rate deal with the company after the U.S. Senate said it paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits stashed in Irish subsidiaries,” Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin report for Reuters.
“The Irish government, which has seen the luring of U.S. multinationals with low taxes as a key part of its economic policy since the 1960s, said its system was transparent and other countries were responsible if the tax rate paid by Apple was too low,” Humphries and Halpin report. “‘They are issues that arise from the taxation systems in other jurisdictions, and that is an issue that has to be addressed first of all in those jurisdictions,’ deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore told national broadcaster RTE on Tuesday. Apple said in a comment posted online on Monday it did not use “tax gimmicks”. It said the existence of its subsidiary Apple Operations International in Ireland did not reduce Apple’s U.S. tax liability, and the company would pay more than $7 billion in U.S. taxes in fiscal 2013.”
“According to the congressional report, Apple’s Tax Operations Head Phillip Bullock told the subcommittee that the company had obtained a special low tax rate through negotiations with the Irish government below the already low standard rate of 12.5 percent. Apple said this had been 2 percent or less for the last 10 years. Ireland’s European Affairs minister Lucinda Creighton denied any special rate agreement,” Humphries and Halpin report. “‘There is no such deal. There is no deal for any company to pay 2 percent corporate tax in Ireland – that is erroneous,’ said Creighton, a barrister by profession. A spokesman for Ireland’s finance department said Ireland’s tax system was statute based, so there was ‘no possibility of individual special tax rate deals for companies.'”
Humphries and Halpin report, “Patrick Coveney, the chief executive of Greencore, one of Ireland largest companies, told RTE radio that it was politicians across the world who were responsible for these tax treaties and tax structures. ‘I find it frankly a little frustrating that it is them who are piling in and criticising international traded businesses who are merely availing of the tax environment that they have put in place,’ said Coveney, a former president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.”
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