(3minutes read)
· Apple won its court fight over a record US$14.9 billion Irish tax bill. It is touted as a crushing blow to European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who initiated a crackdown on preferential fiscal deals to selected companies
· The EU General Court agreed with Apple and said the European Commission failed to show Ireland’s tax arrangements with the company were illegal state aid. The decision can be appealed
Apple won its court fight over a record US$14.9 billion Irish tax bill. It is touted as a crushing blow to European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who initiated a crackdown on preferential fiscal deals to selected companies.
The EU General Court agreed with Apple and said the European Commission failed to show Ireland’s tax arrangements with the company were illegal state aid. The decision can be appealed. The court said the EU authority did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage.
Vestager’s had undertaken a five-year campaign to get rid of allegedly unfair tax deals that some EU governments dole out to favored multinationals including the likes of Amazon.com Apple’s fury at its 2016 tax bill led Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook to blast the EU move as “total political crap.”
