The EU ruling in the Google and Apple cases is a great victory for European citizens and for tax justice, Margrethe Vestager, vice-president of the Commission in charge of market competition policy, said on Tuesday.
“Today is a great victory for European citizens and for tax justice,” Vestager said at a press conference after the EU Court gave the Commission rights in two major cases.
On Tuesday, the Court of the European Union confirmed two important decisions of the European Commission – a new fine to Google of 2.4 billion euros and that Apple received illegal support in Ireland of 13 billion euros, which it must return.
Vestager said that there was a “seismic shift”, that investigative journalists put corporate tax avoidance in the spotlight, which, among other things, resulted in the big LuxLeak scandal.
“It was discovered that some corporations paid almost no tax in Europe, abusing loopholes and asymmetries between different tax systems. Part of the member states provided large tax breaks in the form of illegal state subsidies in order to make them as attractive as possible for investments by multinational companies. This was to the detriment of other members and taxpayers,” said Vestager.
In 2016, the Commission concluded that two Irish tax rulings constituted illegal state aid. They artificially lowered the taxes that Apple paid in Ireland since 1991. The Commission considered this to be a misapplication of Irish tax rules and ordered Ireland to demand a refund of €13 billion from Apple.
Vestager pointed out that the Commission’s decisions led to a change of opinion, a change of attitudes among the member states regarding tax benefits. Thus, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands changed some laws after those decisions of the Commission.