Apple CEO Tim Cook says tax decision will hurt European investment and job creation
Based on a more than two-year investigation, the European Commission announced Apple, which headquarters its European operation in Ireland, illegally received undue tax benefits from the country worth a whopping $14.5 billion.
Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said in a statement: “Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules. 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. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005% in 2014.”
In response to the EU decision, Apple CEO Tim Cook posted “a message” to the company’s community in Europe,” tracing the company’s history in Ireland. The iPhone maker opened a factory in Cork, Ireland, initially staffed by 60 people. That figure has grown to 6,000 employees in the past three-plus decades. A presence in Cork “has helped create and sustain more than 1.5 million jobs across Europe — jobs at Apple, jobs for hundreds of thousands of creative app developers who thrive on the App Store, and jobs with manufacturers and other suppliers,” Cook wrote.
Cook calls the EU’s tax investigation “an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe,” and the allegations have “no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals.”
Cook says the commission decision threatens the sovereignty of EU states. “Beyond the obvious targeting of Apple, the most profound and harmful effect of this ruling will be on investment and job creation in Europe. Using the commission’s theory, every company in Ireland and across Europe is suddenly at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed.”
