“Ireland vowed to fight any adverse decision on its tax dealings with Apple Inc. as the European Union prepares to reveal the size of any potential bill facing the world’s richest company,” Dara Doyle reports for Bloomberg.
“Irish authorities are bracing for a decision as soon as this week that the state provided the iPhone maker with illegal aid through a sweetheart deal in return for creating jobs in the nation,” Doyle reports. “‘We don’t believe we gave any state aid to Apple,’ Eoghan Murphy, junior finance minister, told broadcaster RTE. ‘It’s in the national interest that we defend our international reputation in this regard.'”
Doyle reports, “In preliminary findings in 2014, European competition authorities said Apple’s tax arrangements were improperly designed to give the company a financial boost in exchange for employment in Ireland. Apple has firmly denied using any tax gimmicks, while Ireland is determined to fight any adverse findings as it seeks to defend the corporate tax code.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If the quasi-governmental political confederation — that’s already been hit with one very significant defection and has the existential threat of widespread desertions hanging over its collective head — demands so-called “back taxes” from Apple, it’ll be based invisible legal grounds since the company simply followed the law when paying their taxes:
There was no special deal that we cut with Ireland. We simply followed the laws in the country over the 35 years that we have been in Ireland. If the question is, was there ever a ‘quid pro quo’ that we were trying to strike with the Irish government – that was never the case. We’ve always been very transparent with the Irish government that we wanted to be a good corporate citizen… If countries change the tax laws, we will abide by the new laws and we will pay taxes according to those laws. – Apple CFO Luca Maestri
As we wrote back in April: Apple has repeatedly and confidently stated that they didn’t do anything that was against the law. Therefore, unless the EC tries to change the law retroactively, if that’s even possible, or tries to collect taxes retroactively in some other fashion, Apple is in the clear.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. government warns EU: Do not hit Apple with a massive back tax bill – or else – August 25, 2016
European Commission denies anti-U.S. bias after U.S. Treasury intervention over Apple, Amazon tax probes – August 25, 2016
