Apple Agrees To Settlement With Italian Authorities Just Before 2015 Ends
Apple is set to end the year with an enemy crossed off their dispute list. It has been reported that they are willing to pay the $347 million USD or £234 million GBP that they are fined due to an Italian tax dispute after they were accused by the authorities of fraud.
The dispute started when the US smartphone manufacturer's Italian subsidiary and several of their senior executives came under fire for fraud charges. The charges are over their allegedly inability to comply with the obligations on declaring their earnings in Italy between the years 2008 and 2013; and their allegedly failure to pay their incurred taxes.
Reports say that Apple Italia has almost €900 million EUR behind taxes that have been incurred in the said period of time. Negotiations have happened between the company and the authorities until the Italian authorities have allegedly settled to about one third of the expected amount which is $347 million USD or £234 million GBP.
Italy's tax office has confirmed that a deal was reached between the Italian authorities and Apple but did not clear up the issue of how much the exact financial settlement is. Apple, on the other hand, has not yet given an official statement regarding the issue.
The settlement of the dispute is just the latest of the growing controversy over the tax arrangements between multinational groups and the country their branch or company has settled at. A lot of companies have been recently accused of utilizing cross-border company structures to avoid paying the right amount of tax and reduce it instead.
Apple Italia, which is part of the Cupertino company's European operation, currently has their headquarters in Ireland. Ireland is one of the countries that have the lowest level of corporation tax in the EU where large portions of the group's worldwide profits are. Ireland taxes corporate earnings with a rate of only 12.5 percent, which is significantly lower than the standard Italian rate of 27.5 percent.
Earlier this month, Apple's CEO Tim Cook has said that the accusations against their company of sidestepping US taxes by stashing their cash overseas are "political crap." Cook says that the company pays every dollar that they owe.
Although the tax dispute will now be settled, the investigations that are being conducted on three of Apple Italia's executives will not reduce any severity of the potential sanctions they might face.