A new 'Investor FAQ' document from Apple offers a staunch defense of the firm's tax payments and says that the EU's calculations are misleading.
To the question, "The European Commission states that Apple paid an effective tax rate of .005% on the profits of one of its Irish entities in 2014. Is this accurate?" Apple responded:
"Absolutely not. The number quoted by the European Commission is extremely misleading and deceptive."
It continues: "We paid $400 million in taxes in Ireland in 2014 — considerably more than the Commission’s figure suggests. We were certainly one of the largest corporate taxpayers in Ireland that year, if not the largest."
The tech giant adds that the European Commission failed to take account of tax payments that the company made in other jurisdictions:
"In addition, we paid $400 million of current U.S. taxes on those profits, bringing total current taxes paid to $800 million. Most importantly, the Commission completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of those profits was subject to U.S. taxation. Apple also accrued several billion dollars in U.S. deferred taxes on those profits earned in 2014."
On the issue of making provisions for a payout relating to the ruling, it states that "some amount of cash" will be set aside to deal with a possible payment.
"At this point we do not know the size of the escrow amount, but we expect that it will be reported as restricted cash on Apple’s balance sheet," the statement adds.
Following yesterday's ruling Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process."
"The Commission’s move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been. This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters," he continued.