The target of the case is wrong, it should be Ireland, not Apple. Many companies have unique (to them) tax benefits across the entire EU, some hidden under things like “electricity subsidies”. If the company pay what the country mandates, then the rest should be between the country and the EU, not the EU and the company.
They are setting up an example for other companies doing same. Fuck with EU taxes, we will fuck you up (and lets be honest here, 13 billions absolutely nothing for Apple given 500+ million wealthy market they cater to).
Law often does that to perpetrators. Ireland tried to save the shady deal by refusing the money it should have received (corruption in plain sight, with these sums its not unexpected it goes to highest places plus something about saving nation's public face), so this is how they got about it.
Not sure its 100% best process but overall a very good move and precedent for future.
This means 3.39% of their worldwide revenue, and an even bigger share of their profits. It's not negligible at all, even though it's just collecting taxes late without a penalty.
Isn't that more than the EU defence budget from 2022? Not gonna lie, I'm kinda a little scared now. I realise that there's less than a 1 in 1 billion chance Apple is gonna set up its own military and attack the EU, but still...
Combined defense budgets of all individual member states was 214 billion in 2023. That's 'spending budget', not revenue like the 300 something billion of Apple's revenue cited above.
If you're referring to a single pot of money that exists to support Research and Development, you would typically refer to that as "The European Defence Fund" as "entire EU defence fund budget" would be interpreted differently.
True, but IMO it's a bit misleading because you were using as a point of comparison something that sounded like the military budget of Europe without specifying that it's something completely different (that people probably never heard of — at least I didn't and neither did my grandparent). I'm not saying it's intentional or anything, just wanted to point it out.
