Apple’s European headquarters, located in Cork, Ireland.
Now that the EU’s ruling on Apple’s back taxes in Ireland is final, the country’s government says the $14 billion could be “transformational.”
For a decade, Ireland has sided with Apple against the European Union and worked with it to protest that no laws or regulations were broken. Now that the EU has finally said tough, Apple has to pay up, Ireland is thinking well, what’s done is done, and is rubbing its hands.
Ireland has good reason to be happy with this result, even if it disagreed with it. For alongside the $14 billion from Apple, the country already had a budget surplus of around $9.2 billion.
According to CNBC, Irish Finance Minister Jack discussed the surplus and Apple’s taxes in a pre-election budget speech. Chambers cautioned that Ireland needed to choose carefully how to use the money, but said that it had “the capacity to be transformational.”
“It is this government’s view that we should utilize these revenues to address the known challenges that we face in housing, energy, water and transport infrastructure,” said Chambers. “[It is] imperative [not to use it] for day-to-day expenditure or to narrow the tax base.”
The country could, though, consider putting a few Euros into a farewell party EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager. At the start of her role with the EU, it was Vestager who pushed for Apple’s tax deal to be changed, and now she’s succeeded just as she is about to leave the job.
