Ireland’s finance minister Michael Noonan has claimed that the European Commission could publish the results of its long running investigation into Irish tax rulings agreed with Apple next month.
Noonan indicated that the Commission ‘may make a decision some time in July. But we don't know that with certainty’.
Noonan has previously said that the Irish government had cooperated fully with the process and provided comprehensive responses to the Commission's questions, while there was ‘no question that the Irish authorities sought to give the company in question any kind of special deal’.
The Commission opened an investigation into Apple’s tax affairs in Ireland in June 2014, along with probes into Fiat in Luxembourg and Starbucks in The Netherlands.
The investigations into Fiat and Starbucks focused on the practice of shifting profits abroad to other companies in a group that are based in low-tax or no-tax countries. In 2015 the Commission ruled the authorities had given tax advantages to the two companies, but failed to come to a conclusion about Apple.
The Irish investigation is looking at transfer pricing arrangements to assess whether they involve state aid which benefited the technology giant. The focus is on the individual rulings issued by the Irish tax authorities on the calculation of the taxable profit allocated to the Irish branches of Apple Sales International and of Apple Operations Europe.
At the time it opened the probe, the Commission said it had concerns that this approach had granted a selective advantage to Apple, reducing its tax burden below the level it should pay based on a correct application of the tax rules.
Apple has gone on record to say it does not use ‘tax gimmicks’, while the Irish government had said that no state aid rules were broken and made clear it will appeal any negative finding to the EU Court of Justice.
