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LAST UPDATE | 10 Sep 2024
THE COURT OF Justice of the European Union has ruled that Apple must pay €13 billion to Ireland in unpaid taxes, something the Irish government had argued against.
Eight years since the EU Commission initially found that Ireland had given Apple illegal tax advantages, and after challenges in lower courts, today’s ruling is binding.
“The Court of Justice gives final judgment in the matter and confirms the European Commission’s 2016 decision: Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover,” the court has said.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is the highest court in the EU.
Successive Irish governments, alongside Apple, had argued that the tax was not owed but the EU Commission pressed on with the case.
The government has noted today’s ruling and has said it will consider the judgement. In a statement this morning it was quick to point out that the ruling is based on historical tax rules, that the Revenue Commission has since changed.
It said: “The Irish position has always been that Ireland does not give preferential tax treatment to any companies or taxpayers.
“The CJEU has found that the tax paid was insufficient and that a greater amount of taxation was required to be recovered. Ireland will of course respect the findings of the Court regarding the tax due in this case,” it added.
The Department of Finance will start the processes of taking the funds from the global escrow account.
Tax saga
Apple headquarters its intellectual property arm in Ireland and sells the rights of the brand to other branches of the business.
The European Commission argued that because the entities are based in Ireland, profits should be taxed through the Irish Revenue Commission. The State had argued against that assertion, saying the European Commission’s case breached the country’s tax sovereignty.
Apple and Ireland won a victory in the long-running case in 2020, when the EU’s General Court annulled the order for Apple to pay the taxes owed – a decision Brussels appealed.
But Apple was dealt a blow in November last year when the top legal adviser of the higher European Court of Justice recommended scrapping that decision, saying it was peppered with legal errors.
Reaction
Sinn Féin’s spokesperson for finance Pearse Doherty said that he believed it was a “colossal mistake” for the Government to decide to fight the European Commission’s original appeal and claimed the dispute came at a time when the State needed the funds.
“When they took this case in 2014 this money – the €13 billion – would have built tens of thousands of social and affordable houses right across the State, it could have transformed our society and it could have prevented a lot of pain that we’re seeing as a result of their policies,” Doherty said.
Speaking at a press conference Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner in charge of digital policy and competition, said: “Today is a big win for European citizens and tax justice.”
She reasoned that when large corporations do not pay their share of taxes, it unfairly impacts the citizens of the country and the EU.
Vestager said: “As I understand now, this is not for us at all and the next thing that will have to happen is that these unpaid taxes that have been in an escrow account will have to be released to the Irish state. What they do with it, is completely up to then.”
Senior government sources have previously described the possibility losing the case to The Journal as a “phenomenal political quagmire”. The sources said it would be unprecedented as to how it would be decided as to who gets what.
Vestager said that she hopes her successor, who is expected to be named next week, will continue to target companies who seem to “dominate” these markets and that the European Commission will have the confidence to take similar cases in the future.
In another victory for the EU Commission at the court today, Google was ordered to pay a fine of €2.4 billion.
The CJEU dismissed an appeal by Google and parent company Alphabet against the fine, levied in 2017 after Brussels found that Google abused its dominant position by favouring its own Google Shopping service in search results.
With reporting from AFP and Muiris O’Cearbhaill
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People, not parties,, are elected to Dáil Éireann.
Depriving TDs speaking time because of internal party matters is an affront to democracy.
Kevin, all TD’s have the right to speak, but there is an order placed upon that right so that the larger parties are afforded the opportunity first, representative of their greater respresentative clout.
This system is required for the efficient and orderly debate of particular issues.
If you want to priorotise certain TD’s based on electoral clout then give the TD with the most votes priority. Not the party with most members.
If they can’t speak get the system changed or get rid of them with no pension or perks
The purpose of the meeting today is to secure speaking rights for the affected group, made up of former FGs.
I may be reading it wrong but it seems to me these TDs had speaking rights as FG members which they lost when they lost the Party whip.
They now want to obtain speaking rights as in their own right.
Democracy in action preventing some from speaking in the Dail because they disagreed about party policy. So much for Enda’s claim to be reforming how government works.
FG are really trying to punish & humiliate those ‘rebel’ TD’s
very petty & vindictive
Irish democracy is being revealed for the joke that it is.
It would appear that Enda and Hulk Hogan have succeeded in bringing us the transparent government they promised.
Who could disagree with that comment.
Methinks Kehoe has activated the YFGbots.
This system has been in place long before the FG/Lab government came to power and is represented across the chambers of nearly all other western democracies.
Show me a democracy that does not operate in this way.
This shure we de worst in the world rubbish is physically sickening. Grow a pair of balls ffs and instead of imagining that the world is laughing at you, or that Ireland is the only country with problems, get off your butts and do something.
doesnt mean it works
This government just keeps digging a deeper political grave for itself with every negative announcement they make.
They have their speaking rights at mass on Sundays
Not that I want to listen to a word from idiot Creighton or fool Timmons …but ain’t it slightly off the wall that elected TDs aren’t allowed to speak…..democracy haw are you !
“the coalition has no plans to amend Dáil standing orders”.
So where is the open and accountable Government we were promised?
Serves them right
Democratically elected Tds not allowed to speak in the national parliament.
That’s a bad thing, see?
Democracy = a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. Leaves me to ask, what do you call the present system of government?
Ireland operates a Whipocracy …. NOT a Democracy.
Whipped TDs vote for vested interests not the interests of those who voted for them.
Local Property Tax … case in point.
Revenue voted power by Whipped TDs to get the Anglo Tax from your pay, pension or bank account.
Hostile action by Government against the electorate … not in Syria …. in Ireland.
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FB/LocalPropertyTax
I found this out today and it made my blood boil!!! Eammon Gilmore is on €152,000 a year, plus €48,000 ‘expenses’ and he has FIVE advisers on a combined total of €670,000 !! Just him alone is costing nearly 1million. Ffs like.
his ‘expenses’ are almost twice my salary
He also has unvouched allowances
for example €5000 per year dry cleaning…. !!!!
This is the Taoiseach whose political reform instincts we’re trusting if we abolish the Seanad; he *might* reform the Dáil, but all indications are that he won’t.
yer wan from the Vincent Browne show has nice legs !
Who is yer wan….???
Vincent?
The wan in the background talking to petey forer banker Matthews ; she’s wearing high heels and she does be on the telly so she does .
The new Labour Party watch this space .
There is nothing to stop these TDs joining the existing technical group in the Dail or forming another technical group with someone like Mattie McGrath. Under the rules of the Dail they only need a minimum of 7 TDs for form such a group in order to gain more speaking rights.
The reason this isn’t happening is nothing to do with standing orders, but because it would effect the income “entitlements” of those TDs. This is while Healy Rae & McGrath chose not to be in the first technical group. The earn more money by being out of it.
There are 166 TDs in the Dail. If they each were allowed 5 mins a day speaking time then that would be 13 hours and 50 minutes each day excluding votes, debate and questions. Doesn’t seem workable.
you are assuming that they all turn up to the Dail every day
have your say