The European Union\u2019s top court on Tuesday rejected Apple\u2019s final legal challenge against an order from the bloc\u2019s executive commission to repay 13 billion euros in back taxes to Ireland, bringing an end to the long-running dispute.<\/p>\n
The European Court of Justice overruled a lower court\u2019s earlier decision in the case, saying it \u201cconfirms the European Commission\u2019s 2016 decision: Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case drew outrage from Apple when it was\u00a0opened in 2016, with CEO Tim Cook calling it \u201ctotal political crap.\u201d Then-U.S. President Donald Trump slammed European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who spearheaded the campaign to root out special tax deals and crack down on big U.S. tech companies, as the \u201ctax lady\u201d who \u201creally hates the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
In its\u00a02020 ruling, the European Union\u2019s General Court disagreed with the European Commission, the bloc\u2019s executive branch, which had accused Apple of striking an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities so that it could pay extremely low rates.<\/p>\n
A key adviser to the\u00a0European Court of Justice\u00a0(ECJ) recommended last November that it set aside a 2020 EU general court ruling that the European Commission had failed to stand up a claim the iPhone maker owed the Republic more than \u20ac13 billion in back taxes, plus interest.<\/p>\n
The ECJ typically rules on cases between three and six months after such an adviser, known as an advocate general, issues an opinion.<\/p>\n
While there had been an expectation in Dublin that the ECJ decision would be issued in June, sources said on June 13th that it would not be made until after the court\u2019s summer recess, which spanned from mid-July to the end of August.<\/p>\n
In his opinion in November, advocate general Giovanni Pitruzzella said the general court, the lower court, committed a series of errors of law and failed to assess \u201ccertain methodological errors\u201d relating to Apple\u2019s Irish tax liabilities.<\/p>\n
He recommended the ECJ set aside the general court\u2019s judgment and that it be sent back down to the lower court for a new ruling on the case\u2019s merits.<\/p>\n
The views of advocates general are typically followed by the court.<\/p>\n
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager ordered Apple in 2016 to pay the State more than \u20ac13 billion in alleged back taxes, covering 2004-2014, as she claimed the Republic had given the US tech giant illegal tax aid.<\/p>\n
The decision centered on two tax opinions, or \u201crulings\u201d as they are referred to, handed out by Revenue in 1991 and 2007 to Apple subsidiaries in Ireland.<\/p>\n
The commission said the rulings gave Apple an unfair and select advantage over other corporate taxpayers.<\/p>\n
A legal appeal by Ireland and Apple against the commission\u2019s decision resulted in a ruling by the EU general court in 2020 that Ms Vestager\u2019s officials fell short of showing to \u201cthe requisite legal standard\u201d that Apple had received illegal State aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Union\u2019s top court on Tuesday rejected Apple\u2019s final legal challenge against an order from the bloc\u2019s executive commission to repay 13 billion euros in back taxes to Ireland, bringing an end to the long-running dispute. The European Court of Justice overruled a lower court\u2019s earlier decision in the case, saying it \u201cconfirms the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":47872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,1386,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-judiciary","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47871"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47877,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47871\/revisions\/47877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}