Except it's not. Apple paid all the tax Ireland asked for. The problem is the EU are saying Ireland should have different tax laws and therefore Apple should now pay Ireland retrospective taxes based on what the UN thinks Ireland's tax law should have been in the past.
The problem with that should be mind-numbingly self-evident.
2. My understanding is that Ireland's tax laws should meet a certain EU standard. Apple was meeting Ireland's laws but Ireland was not meeting the EU's and thus Apple wasn't paying the correct amount of tax. So the laws have always been in place, they just weren't being followed correctly by Ireland or by Apple.
2. That sounds like fault lies with Ireland, not Apple. Or perhaps with the EU for failing to enforce their own damn rules.
This decision is the EU enforcing the laws though. And I think the fault does lie with Ireland - but nobody is saying the fault lies with Apple. That's why they're not being fined. They're just being told to pay money they have always owed, money which was never theirs. I can see it from both sides though. Why should Apple be 'punished' if they were told they were paying the right amount? On the other hand if my accountant screws up my taxes and I pay too little I have to pay it back eventually.
...to an entity that repeatedly insists they're not owed it.
The idea that state aid laws are relevant to corporation tax levels is a relatively recent phenomenon in the EU which is why these tax setups date back decades and it's only now that the EU has suddenly "discovered" that they're illegal.
The laws have not always been in place and not being followed. Rather, an extremely vague set of EU powers is now being stretched past the limit in order to enforce EU policy of the day.
Judging from what you're saying though the law has always been in place and no new law has been created to enforce this decision - it's just an old law being interpreted to cover this scenario. Is that correct?
But nobody is arguing that Apple is weak and needs to be protected from foreign competition in this case. Apple is the foreign competition. And Ireland isn't paying them money to keep them afloat. So this is a very different sort of situation to what state aid rules were designed for, and that's why the EU is using such a tortured definition of "aid". The Commission has wanted to control and harmonise member state tax policies for a long time but know governments would never let them when asked directly. So they are finding ways to bend old powers to their latest needs.
Thanks for the info!
No, the EC is not saying anything about the tax laws of Ireland