EU Court Deals Apple a Staggering $14 Billion Tax Blow!
Apple Inc. may be compelled to settle a €13 billion ($14 billion) tax bill with Ireland as an adviser to the European Union’s highest court suggests that the company’s previous legal triumph could be invalidated.
EU Court of Justice Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella said in an advisory opinion that Apple’s victory at a lower EU court should be reviewed because it was riddled with legal errors. The EU’s highest court will issue its binding ruling in a major state aid dispute in the coming months and will follow such advice in most cases.
Pitruzzella said that “in light of the errors of law committed by the General Court, which are erroneous in its assessments,” the action should be “dismissed in its entirety.” Apple shares fell 0.2 percent in New York at 10:32 a.m.
EU cartel chief Margrethe Vestager, who is on temporary leave to run for the post of president of the European Investment Bank, sparked outrage from the iPhone maker’s Cupertino, California headquarters to the White House when she decided in 2016 to participate in the company’s tax arrangements. in Ireland. It is by far the biggest case in Vestager’s decades-long campaign for tax fairness, which has also targeted the likes of Amazon.com Inc and automaker Stellantis NV’s Fiat. He claimed that Selective tax benefits for large companies are illegal state aid, which is prohibited in the EU.
Apple and Ireland won the first bid to overturn the EU decision in 2020 after judges found the European Commission had made several mistakes. The defeat was a crushing blow for Vestager, who has suffered a number of losses in other tax cases after judges slammed her team’s findings that Ireland and Luxembourg had given companies an unfair tax advantage.
Apple on Thursday disputed Pitruzzella’s findings, saying the lower court “was very clear that Apple did not receive a selective advantage or state aid, and we believe that should be upheld.”
Irish Finance Minister Michael McGrath said that while the state’s legal teams are analyzing the findings, the government’s position remains “that the correct amount of Irish tax was paid and that Ireland did not provide state aid to Apple”.
Despite setbacks for the commission in some other EU courts, judges have at least upheld its new way of using state aid rules to challenge companies’ arrangements with member states. The EU’s move also helped a bloc-wide effort to close tax loopholes that allowed some multinationals to legally pay less tax in Europe.
