“Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, has described as ‘wrongheaded’ and ‘maddening’ the European Commission’s finding this week that Ireland’s tax incentives to the tech giant were illegal,” Krishnadev Calamur reports for The Atlantic.
“The EC ruled Tuesday that Ireland gave Apple 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) of illegal tax incentives, and ordered Dublin to recover that money. Both Ireland, which has made low corporate taxes a cornerstone of its financial policy, and Apple, one of hundreds of U.S. companies with operations in Ireland, have said they’ll appeal the ruling,” Calamur reports. “Cook, speaking to RTE, the Irish broadcaster, dismissed the idea the tax benefits were illegal and expressed confidence the ruling would eventually be overturned.”
“Cook also dismissed the EC’s contention that Ireland’s ‘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. ‘It’s a false number,’” he said. ‘I have no idea where the number came from. It is not true. Here is the truth. In that year, we paid $400 million to Ireland, and that amount of money was based on the statutory Irish income tax rate of 12.5 percent,'” Calamur reports. “The decision could provoke a dispute with the U.S., which has accused Brussels of unfairly targeting American companies over taxation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The EC’s Margrethe Vestager is a fool who’s in way over her head.
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