Apple previous had its European headquarters in Ireland and the EU regulators told both Apple and Ireland that the company did not pay enough taxes. The regulators ordered Apple to pay Ireland an extra €13 billion in tax, both Apple and Ireland are appealing this.
This week there have been reports over Apple tax affairs and also a number of company’s after lots of documents were leaked in the Paradise Papers. It has been discovered that Apple made changes to where their operations were run from and have now chosen Jersey.
Apple has now released a press release in response to the recent allegations, they have said that they have not paid any less tax as a result of the changes, you can see a statement from the company below.
The debate over Apple’s taxes is not about how much we owe but where we owe it. As the largest taxpayer in the world we’ve paid over $35 billion in corporate income taxes over the past three years, plus billions of dollars more in property tax, payroll tax, sales tax and VAT. We believe every company has a responsibility to pay the taxes they owe and we’re proud of the economic contributions we make to the countries and communities where we do business.
To be fair to Apple, they have used the current laws to pay the tax they are legally due to pay. It is the laws that need to change that would ensure that companies like Apple, Google, Amazon end up paying taxes in the countries where the money is generated from.
Source Apple Press Release
