The EU’s General Court ruled that Ireland was not owed €13 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple earlier this month.
The came after an appeal by Ireland and the tech company against an initial ruling by the European Commission (EC), which ordered Ireland to collect the €13 billion from the tech company, saying the low amount of tax paid by Apple in Ireland was a form of state aid that violated competition rules in the EU’s single market.
An appeal is now expected to be made to the Court of Justice, the the highest court of the EU, the ruling of which will be final.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe told the Dáil that if the an appeal was made then the case would take another two years to come to an end.
In response, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said some CEOs of big corporations should be wearing masks “associated with stick-up robberies”:
“It’s kind of appropriate that now it’s the politicians who are wearing the masks that are involved with stick-up robberies.
But it might be even more appropriate for the chief executives of some of the biggest and wealthiest corporations to be wearing masks associated with stick-up robberies.”
A stick-up robbery means a robbery at gunpoint, taken from the command given to victims to raise their hands in the air.
