Ireland’s finance minister, Michael Noonan, has claimed that the appeal on the European Commission’s decision to recover £11bn in taxes from Apple could take up to four years but has strong advice that Ireland could win
Noonan appeared on Bloomberg on 23 September to discuss the EU’s tax claim against Apple and Ireland’s tax structure.
Noonan said: ‘We have very strong grounds for appeal and we have very strong legal advice that we would win the appeal.’
He went on to explain: ‘There are two phases to the appeal. It will go through the ordinary European court first and then there’s an appeal to the European court of Justice. It will probably take four years, maybe even more.’
When questioned about tax avoidance Noonan responded by saying that tax avoidance is international so the solutions should be international as well.
He said: ‘We have been on the forefront of the OECD’s set of reforms and we have a leading role in BEPS.’
The OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project refers to tax avoidance strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations.
Noonan claimed that more matters, such as Apple, should be dealt with by US law saying: ‘It’s not that Apple and other companies don’t have a tax liability it’s that they don’t have to pay it until they repatriate. So, it’s not a matter for Irish law, it’s a matter for US law.’
