Recently, the EU Commission made a landmark ruling regarding Apple’s tax affairs and told the company to pay back a whopping 13 billion Euros in unpaid taxes from the period 1991-2015. Apparently, Apple only paid a tax rate of 1% in 2003 which dropped even further to 0.005% in 2014. The EU Commission’s investigation claimed Ireland handed illegal tax breaks to Apple which didn’t comply with EU legislation. Despite this damning verdict, Apple CEO Tim Cook is bullish and told Irish broadcaster RTE that he’s “very confident” the ruling will be overturned. Tim Cook also went on to say:
“It’s maddening, it’s disappointing, it’s clear that this comes from a political place, it has no basis in fact or in law, and unfortunately it’s one of those things we have to work through.”
“When you’re accused of doing something that is so foreign to your values, it brings out an outrage in you, and that’s how we feel. Apple has always been about doing the right thing.
“We haven’t done anything wrong, and the Irish government hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Not only that, Tim Cook called the decision “maddening and political”, then questioned the tax figures:
“It’s a false number. I have no idea where the number came from. It is not true. Here is the truth. In that year, we paid $400m to Ireland, and that amount of money was based on the statutory Irish income tax rate of 12.5%.”
It seems Tim Cook is certain that the ruling will be reversed and doesn’t believe there are any merits to allegations of tax avoidance. These criticisms have been directed at Apple for some time and it will be interesting to see if the appeal is successful.
Do you think Apple is guilty of tax avoidance on a mammoth scale?
Tax avoidance is a business model for money launderers of any persuasion, Apple will not be left out.