US blasts EU move to extract billions in back taxes from Apple

The US Treasury Department slams an EU ruling ordering Apple to pay record back taxes of up to 13 billion euros, saying the decision threatens the bilateral “spirit of economic partnership.”

“The Commission’s actions could threaten to undermine foreign investment, the business climate in Europe, and the important spirit of economic partnership between the US and the EU,” a Treasury Department spokesperson says in a statement.

“We will continue to monitor these cases as they progress, and we will continue to work with the Commission toward our shared objective of preventing the erosion of our corporate tax bases,” the statement adds.

Ireland’s tax collection agency, the Revenue Commissioners, insists that Apple hasn’t dodged a penny of lawfully calculated tax in Ireland.

The Revenue Commissioner chairman, Niall Cody, says the overarching problem is “mismatches between different countries’ tax rules.” Whereas Ireland taxes only a multinational company’s profits on sales within Ireland — a country of barely 4.6 million and representing a tiny fraction of those companies’ global business — the United States often seeks to recoup tax on a US-headquartered company’s profits worldwide.

Cody says Apple’s profits “that are not generated by their Irish branches — such as profits from technology, design and marketing that are generated outside Ireland — cannot be charged with Irish tax under Irish tax law.”

He says the Revenue Commissioners applied the same Irish tax rules to Apple as to around 1,000 other multinationals, most of them American, with bases in Ireland. He says: “Full tax due was paid in accordance with the law.”

— news agencies