Apple wins EU court case over $15 billion in claimed taxes

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — A European Union court on Wednesday delivered a hammer blow to the bloc’s attempts to rein in sweetheart tax deals between multinationals and individual member countries when it ruled that technology giant Apple does not have to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.

The EU Commission had claimed in 2016 that Apple had an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities that allowed it to pay extremely low rates. But the EU’s General Court said Wednesday that ”the Commission did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage.”

“The Commission was wrong to declare” that Apple “had been granted a selective economic advantage and, by extension, state aid,” said the Luxembourg-based court, which is the second-highest in the EU. The ruling can only be appealed on points of law.

The EU Commission had ordered Apple to pay for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. The commission said Apple used two shell companies in Ireland to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%.

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By RAF CASERT
36 minutes ago


Read more: https://apnews.com/97a6561bf99f3b982a0cab31813d5220

[DFW]

1. I am not surprised

The EU has long been a chaotic mishmosh of confusing and often contradictory tax laws and regulations, often turning a blind eye when member countries enact regulations that benefit themselves only, and contrary to EU law. Of course the multinationals will take advantage of those laws that suit them best.

As long as the EU continues to drown itself in unnecessary overpaid bureaucrats, and refuses to act as the union its founders envisioned, the multinationals will go where the legal tax burden is lightest. The EU should have addressed this situation decades ago. As long as they refuse to, well, to coin a phrase, „there will always be an Ireland.“