Apple Store, Amsterdam
While Ireland may not want the €13B ($15B) the EU says Apple owes in underpaid tax, it seems other European countries do. Germany’s DW reports from a summit of European finance ministers that at least four countries have ‘expressed an interest’ in claiming their share.
Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem appeared to be first in line, warning Apple on Saturday to “get ready” to pay up. His comment came after a two-day meeting of his EU counterparts in the Slovak capital, Bratislava […]
Other EU countries, including Austria, Italy and France, are following the case closely, and expressing interest in a possible payout, according to Austria’s Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling, who spoke on the sidelines of the two-day summit.
There is already precedent for such claims …
Italy previously told Apple that it does not accept the funneling of profits on Italian Apple Stores to Ireland, and submitted a demand for back tax on $1.3B worth of sales in the country. Apple paid the bill. The difference here is that it – and other European countries – would be able to make the same claim for a full ten years of back-tax.
The good news for Apple is that any tax claimed by the individual countries in which sales were made would reduce the tax bill payable to Ireland, so the total payout would be unchanged. But with many more countries having a financial stake in the case, that is likely to increase the pressure in the European Commission to win the case if and when it comes to court.
We still won’t be able to make sense of the conflicting claims by Apple and the EC on how much tax the company has paid in Ireland until the full report is published. It’s believed that the delay is to allow Apple time to request redactions of commercially-sensitive data.
There have been very different reactions in Europe and the U.S. to the ruling and Tim Cook’s description of it as ‘political crap.’
Via Patently Apple
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