In your open letter to the EU, you wrote:
At the time, Cork was suffering from high unemployment and extremely low economic investment. But Apple’s leaders saw a community rich with talent, and one they believed could accommodate growth if the company was fortunate enough to succeed.
…
We have operated continuously in Cork ever since, even through periods of uncertainty about our own business, and today we employ nearly 6,000 people across Ireland.
…
We received guidance from Irish tax authorities on how to comply correctly with Irish tax law.
(source)
There are a lot of communities in the US rich with talent.
Those could be 6000 Americans across the US.
That $14.5 billion in taxes should have been paid to the US government to benefit Americans.
But instead, you hide the simple fact that your smart lawyers found a tax loophole, and that’s the only motivation for hiding in Ireland. Because the reality is:
“Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules,” said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
“The Commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” she added.
The standard rate of Irish corporate tax is 12.5%. The Commissions’s investigation concluded that Apple had effectively paid 1% tax on its European profits in 2003 and about 0.005% in 2014. (source)
So stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes, because I for one am not buying it, or your products.
Marc Clifton 