For those of us who grew up singing songs about Irish nationhood, today is a depressing day. As youths we crooned about how Ireland, ‘long a province’, will one day be ‘a nation once again’. We stood in stiff attention to the Irish national anthem with its promise that Ireland will never again ‘shelter the despot or the slave’. Now we switch on the news and what do we see? A foreign court bossing Ireland around.
Ireland must now go after Apple and demand billions of euros from it
Today, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Ireland granted Apple ‘unlawful aid’ and must now badger Apple for £11 billion in ‘unpaid taxes’. The case was brought by the European Commission (EC). It accused Ireland of giving Apple unfair tax advantages between 1991 and 2014. Ireland did indeed enforce low tax rates on Apple because it was keen to show that Ireland is an ‘attractive home for large companies’.
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