European Union Tax Collectors Demand Apple To Pay €13 Billion

Ireland has vowed to appeal the tax decision in European courts, but as of now the EU says Apple must pay 13 billion Euros (plus interest!) after Ireland illegally slashed the company’s taxes.

The world’s richest company benefited from a “selective tax treatment” in Ireland that gave it a “significant advantage over other businesses,” the European Union regulator said Tuesday. It’s the largest tax penalty in a three-year crackdown on sweetheart fiscal deals granted by EU nations.

Apple and the Irish government have both vowed to fight the decision, which also risks stoking a fight with the U.S. over taxation policies — with the U.S. having already complained that Europe is unfairly targeting American companies and threatening global tax reforms.

“Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in an e-mailed statement. “This selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 percent in 2014.”

The European Union doesn’t want to dig their hands into Apple’s purse, they need to.  The swollen ranks of EU bureaucracy aren’t going to pay their salaries by themselves!

Apple is down one dollar on the news because we’re not caring about negative news items so much right now.

NASDAQ is down a smidgen also on the authoritarian EU’s actions.