China News Agency, Brussels, July 15th (Reporter De Yongjian) The huge tax evasion case of multinational giant Apple in Europe has made waves again. The European Union Judiciary EU General Court stood on the side of Apple and the Irish government on the 15th and ruled that Apple does not need Pay 13 billion euros in taxes to the Irish government.
The General Court of the European Union based in Luxembourg announced the ruling on the same day. In 2016, the European Commission, as a regulatory agency, determined that Apple had used the tax treaty with the Irish government to evade taxes and asked Apple to make up to 13 billion euros in taxes. Apple and the Irish government expressed dissatisfaction with this and will "sue" Go to the EU general court.
In the ruling of the European Union’s general court, the European Commission failed to produce sufficient evidence to prove that the Irish government violated the EU competition law’s “prohibited state assistance” provisions and used taxation as a national resource to provide Apple with improper preferences, which distorted fair competition in the EU’s internal market. Therefore, the decision made by the European Commission in 2016 to "pay taxes" was invalid.
The ruling further stated that the European Commission mistakenly determined that the Irish government provided Apple with "special operating preferences", and even if the EU general court "sadly saw" that Apple’s tax treaty with the Irish government was incomplete and inconsistent, But these flaws alone are not enough to prove that the Irish government violated the EU competition law "prohibition of state assistance" provisions.
After the ruling was announced on the 15th, the European Commission’s executive vice president for competition affairs, Vestag, issued a statement saying that the European Commission will carefully study the ruling to decide the next step; in accordance with the procedure, the European Commission can The European Court of Justice instituted a lawsuit.
In recent years, the European Commission has occasionally invoked the "prohibition of state assistance" clause in order to "strike hard" the tax evasion of multinational giants in Europe. In addition to Apple’s tax evasion case, the European Commission has also launched investigations into the tax treaties reached between Fiat and the Luxembourg government, Starbucks and the Dutch government, and IKEA and the Dutch government. As a result, Starbucks and Fiat are required to make up to 20 million to 30 million euros in taxes respectively. The IKEA tax evasion case is still under investigation. (Finish)