State to submit more Apple tax information to Brussels

The government is poised to submit another batch of information to Brussels on Apple's Irish tax dealings as the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the European Commission's probe into the matter is dragging on longer than expected.

A filing will be made on Friday, following requests by the commission for more data, a Department of Finance spokesman said, clarifying comments made by the minister on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters in Dublin before going into an Irish Strategic Investment Fund conference, Mr Noonan said he didn’t believe the EU was delaying a decision to avoid interfering in the country’s political landscape as talks continue to form a government.

“I don’t think the two events are connected at all,” Mr Noonan said. “They’re constantly requesting additional information from us. They’re moving at their own private timetable.”

The minister said while the investigation, which began in two years ago, “has been protracted,” he expects that the EU will issue a final ruling this year.

The commission claimed in preliminary findings in 2014 that Apple’s tax arrangements had been improperly designed to give the iPhone maker an unfair financial advantage in return for maintaining jobs in the country.

The US technology giant said in 2013 it paid an effective annual rate of tax of less than 2 percent in Ireland over the previous decade.

Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook said in November that the group planned to increase its Irish workforce by 1,000 people to 6,000 by the middle of 2017.

A negative ruling would involve Ireland being directed to recover back taxes going back as far as 2003. This could run into billions of euros, according to various analysts’ estimates.

Apple has previously said it doesn't use "tax gimmicks," while the Department of Finance has said that the case involved no breach of state-aid rules and has vowed to fight any negative final ruling from the commission in the EU Court of Justice.

The EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said earlier this month that the investigation would drag on for some time.

"The first priority is the quality of the case work," Ms Vestiger told a European Parliament hearing on April 4. "Therefore, it is very difficult to make predictions as to when the case will be ready for a decision."