The on-going dispute between Apple, the EU and the Irish is set to take a new turn, with Irish Finance minister Michael Noonan set to appeal the European Commission’s verdict in an EU court this week.
Back in August, the European Union’s antitrust regulator demanded that Ireland recoup roughly US$14.5 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple.
The European Commission Tuesday asserted that tax arrangements Ireland offered Apple in 1991 and 2007 allowed the company to pay less than 1% or almost zero tax on its European profits for more than 10 years, between 2003 and 2014.
“The commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” said European antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
In response, Apple said the European Commission was trying “to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process.”
Noonan spoke earlier this week, saying that “the government fundamentally disagrees with the European Commission’s analysis and the decision left the government no choice but to take an appeal to the European courts.”
Apple has also vowed to fight the decision in courts.
