Apple launched a legal appeal against a EU decision in which it ordered the Apple Inc to pay billions in backtaxes to Ireland.
The European Commission, the EU executive arm, in August ordered iPhone maker Apple to reimburse a record 13 billion euros ($14 billion) in unpaid taxes in Ireland.
The EU, led by its competition chief Margrethe Vestager, accused Ireland of handing Apple a secret tax deal that allowed the iPhone maker to enjoy almost zero tax on all its sales worldwide for more than a decade.
The deal was in breach of the EU’s state aid rules, argued Vestager, a former Danish finance minister, who has made clamping down on tax deals a priority.
According to Apple, the Commission took unilateral action and retroactively changed the rules, disregarding decades of Irish tax law, US tax law, as well as global consensus on tax policy, that everyone has relied on.
The appeal, lodged at an EU court in Luxembourg, came after the bloc’s anti—trust teams released its full 130-page argumentation in the case.
It also says that the Commission has exceeded its powers and interfered with national tax sovereignty,” Ireland’s finance department said in a three—page outline of its main arguments.
According to EU Commission’s calculations, Ireland allowed Apple to pay a tax rate of 1 per cent of its European profits in 2003 which then dropped to 0.005 percent by 2014.