Apple misses deadline to pay back taxes

Apple was able to avoid paying taxes for by diverting profit from two regional subsidiaries to an untaxed "head office" in Ireland. (Source: PCWorld)

Last year, the EU ruled that Apple had been illegally avoiding paying taxes by splitting profit from subsidiary companies and re-routing them to a "head office" in Ireland which was not subject to tax. The Commissioner gave Ireland four months to collect the roughly US $14.5 billion in taxes, but nothing has been recovered as of yet.

Douglas Black, Published 02/01/2017

Business Apple

In late August of 2016, the three-year investigation by the European Union into Apple's operations in Ireland concluded with the decision that Apple had illegally been avoiding paying taxes. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager ordered the Irish government, with whom Apple had a special arrangement with, to collect about US$14.5 billion in unpaid taxes. She had given the Irish government four months to collect the taxes—a deadline which has just passed, seemingly without consequence.

In a news conference on Tuesday, Verstager noted that whilst the amount had not been paid, they had been working with the Irish government and they were "moving forward to do the recovery of the unpaid taxes".

"It's a tricky thing to do because it's a large sum, so of course you have to figure out how to do that. It's not an escrow account as in some of the other cases where it's €25 million or €30 million or something like that," Verstager said at the conference.

In the meantime, Apple has been appealing the European Commission's ruling as promised. After the ruling, Tim Cook stated the verdict was "total political crap" and that he was "confident" the ruling would be reversed.