Apple has operated nearly tax-free in Ireland since 1980

13 years ago

“Apple has operated almost tax-free in Ireland since 1980, welcomed by a government keen to bring jobs to what was then one of Europe’s poorest countries, former company executives and Irish officials have said,” Poornima Gupta and Padraic Halpin report for Reuters. “Apple, one of Ireland’s top multinational employers, denied avoiding billions of dollars in U.S. taxes and said its arrangements helped fund research jobs in the United States. The committee revealed that Apple’s Irish companies, some of which are not tax resident in any jurisdiction, allowed the group to pay no tax on much of its overseas earnings in recent years.”

Gupta and Halpin report, “A former company executive and Irish officials told Reuters the almost tax-free status dates all the way back to Apple’s arrival in County Cork 32 years ago. Apple must have seemed attractive to Ireland and to Cork. Amid a generally moribund Irish economy, Cork had been hard hit by the closure of its shipyards and a Ford car plant, and in 1986 nearly one in four were out of work in the city.”

“In the early days, Apple’s staff sat down to meals together. Now the company employs 4,000 in Ireland and is the country’s biggest multinational employer,” Gupta and Halpin report. “‘There were tax concessions for us to go there,’ said Del Yocam, who was Vice President of manufacturing at Apple in the early 1980s. ‘It was a big concession.’

“In fact, the deal was about as good as a company can get,” Gupta and Halpin report. “‘We had a tax holiday for the first 10 years in Ireland. We paid no taxes to the Irish government,’ one former finance executive, who asked not to be named, said. Apple wasn’t an exception, although it was among the last to enjoy such favorable treatment.”

Read more in the full article here.