State policy has traditionally aligned with big multinationals here given our reliance on them for valuable jobs
The 2016 decision by the European Commission that Apple owed Ireland more than €13 billion in back taxes put the then coalition government in an awkward position for one obvious reason.
At the time, the Government gave three reasons for its decision. One was the need to defend the integrity of the tax system. The second was the need to provide “tax certainty” to businesses - in other words if they paid their tax in Ireland, then this was an accepted part of the international system. And the third, according to then finance minister Michael Noonan, was “to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign Member State competence of taxation.
Meta Ireland chief Anne O’Leary: ‘We need to work together across the tech industry ... so we keep people safe online’Irish government policy has traditionally aligned itself with big multinationals here, on the basis that they are key providers of jobs and taxes. And little wonder. Since the Apple judgement in 2016, annual corporate tax revenues have multiplied from €7.5 billion then to close to €23 billion last year.
The Government will continue to insist that legally the commission erred in its original decision and that the money it claimed was taxable here was not, in fact, liable to Irish taxation. It will say there was no special deal for Apple and that the Revenue correctly applied Irish law.