Apple expects a sentence of at least one billion euros after the long-awaited verdict of the European Commission in the dispute over the amount of taxes that the company pays in Ireland. According to two charges of Irish officials, one from 1991 and another from 2007, Apple, which employs about 5,500 workers in Ireland (the seat of the company in the EU), reported extremely low taxes on profits in Europe. The European Commission believes that this so-called preferential agreement gives Apple the unfair advantage over other companies and is a violation of a range of government policies. In recent years, Apple has paid taxes amounting to less than 1% on some of its sales in Europe, using a complicated structure of taxation. By comparison, the normal corporate tax in Ireland is 12.5% and 35% in the US. As one of the several well-known American companies that hold the majority of their cash overseas, Apple’s involvement in the current situation has caused enormous concern within the United States. In 2015, Apple held 187 billion dollars of cash out of America, which is almost one-sixth of its cache. US companies that do business globally hold cash offshore to avoid paying taxes to the US in the amount of 35%.
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