EU Drops Court Case After Apple Repays More Than $16 Billion In Taxes and Interest To Ireland (theguardian.com)

"Ireland's government has fully recovered more than [$16 billion] in disputed taxes and interest from Apple, which it will hold in an escrow fund pending its appeal against a European Union tax ruling," reports The Guardian. From the report: The European commission ruled in August 2016 that Apple had received unfair tax incentives from the Irish government. Both Apple and Dublin are appealing against the original ruling, saying the iPhone maker's tax treatment was in line with Irish and EU law. Ireland's finance ministry, which began collecting the back taxes in a series of payments in May, estimated last year the total amount could have reached -- [$17.5 billion] including EU interest. In the end the amount was [$15.2 billion] in back taxes plus [$1.4 billion] interest.

For its part, the commission said it would scrap its lawsuit against Ireland, which it initiated last year because of delays in recovering the money. "In light of the full payment by Apple of the illegal state aid it had received from Ireland, commissioner (Margrethe) Vestager will be proposing to the college of commissioners the withdrawal of this court action," the commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said. Ireland's finance ministry said its appeal had been granted priority status and is progressing through the various stages of private written proceedings before the general court of the European Union (GCEU), Europe's second highest court. The matter will likely take several years to be settled by the European courts, it added.

Comments

Apple has paid nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has not repaid anything. What they have done is use the tons of money they have doing nothing in Ireland, and put it in a escrow account.

Now that money is sort of working for Apple. The EU wants a big chunk, and Apple will go to court to prevent that. Meanwhile, Ireland will be beholding
to Apple for preventing the EU suing Ireland. The EU knew it could not win against Apple, so they went after Ireland. Now we have a proxy court battle.

Well you see

[rsilvergun]

punishment only deters crime when working class people are involved. When corporations and the extremely rich are involved there's just too much risk to jobs and the economy to significantly punish. Now don't forget to vote for your local pro-corporate political candidate or they'll ship your job overseas and the price of a hamburger will treble.