Apple paid Ireland $17B in taxes last year, accounting for 40% of its global total

Apple’s tax relationship with Ireland has gone from corporate fairy tale to cautionary tale. The company paid Ireland roughly $17 billion in taxes last year, a figure that represented about 40% of its entire worldwide tax bill. For a country with a population smaller than the Chicago metro area, that is a staggering amount of fiscal dependence on a single corporation. The enormous payment is largely the result of a September 2024 ruling by the European Court of Justice that forced Apple to cough up more than a decade’s worth of back taxes. How a sweetheart deal turned sour The roots of this story stretch back to 1991, when Ireland offered Apple tax arrangements that allowed the company to pay remarkably low corporate tax rates. Those deals were refreshed in 2007 and became the foundation for Apple routing hundreds of billions in international revenue through Irish subsidiaries. In 2016, the European Commission declared these arrangements illegal state aid. It ordered Apple to pay €13 billion in back taxes covering the period from 2003 to 2014. Apple and Ireland joined forces to appeal the decision. Ireland essentially argued against receiving billions of euros in tax revenue, a mov...