EU: Apple tax ruling is unfair, says former European commissioner

The European commission’s decision that Apple owes Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes has been branded “fundamentally unfair” by its former competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes.

Writing for the Guardian, Kroes attacked Tuesday’s ruling by Margrethe Vestager, her successor as Europe’s top competition watchdog.

The commission found that Ireland had breached state-aid rules by allowing the California technology group to pay substantially less tax than other businesses since 1991. It made a similar ruling against Starbucks and Fiat in the Netherlands last year, and has used state-aid laws to launch ongoing investigations into Amazon and McDonald’s in Luxembourg.

Kroes said state-aid rules should not apply to tax matters. “EU member states have a sovereign right to determine their own tax laws,” she said. “State aid cannot be used to rewrite those rules. However, the current state-aid investigations into tax rulings appear to do exactly that.”

Apple routes the majority of its European and other foreign revenues through Ireland. The commission found Apple’s effective rate of corporation tax at one subsidiary in Ireland was just 0.005% of its profits in 2014 – equal to a tax bill of just €50 on each €1m of profit.

Full Content: Herald Sun

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