Remarking on a U.S. Senate investigation that claims Apple avoided taxes on tens of billions of dollars by holding significant profits in three Irish subsidiaries, Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the country did not work out special corporate tax rate of only 2% with Apple as rumored, according to “All Things D” (http://tinyurl.com/q52z832).
“I do not want to be the whipping boy for some misunderstanding in a hearing in the U.S. Congress,” Noonan said during a parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday.
In other words, if Apple was able to markedly reduce its tax bill in the U.S. and the rest of the world, “it was because of a gap between different tax jurisdictions, not some magic deal with Ireland,” notes “All Things D.”
“Maybe there was a magician, but the magician wasn’t living down in Cork,” Noonan said. “Because [Apple] is not tax resident in Ireland, [it is] not liable to Irish tax.”
