This was a novel that had been going on for a long time, and now it finds its (likely) final chapter: as informed by Reuters, Apple has just paid the last installment of the 14.5 billion euros (about R $ 69 billion) charged by the European Commission on account of irregular tax benefits granted by the Irish government since 2003.
The amount refers to the sum of the 13.1 billion originally charged by the agency plus 1.4 billion in interest generated by the difference of more than two years between the original sentence and the payment now made.
Apparently, neither Apple nor the Irish government was able to convince the European Commission that the tax benefits were legal, but the story does not end here yet: the money was deposited in a custody account and will be released to Dublin once all legal procedures Ma is still appealing the decision, but at this point a change at the end of the story is highly unlikely.
Despite this, the European Union's antitrust regulators are already dropping all complaints against Ma, as a Commission spokesman stated, so unless we have a surprising twist in the case, the soap opera ends here.
We look forward to seeing if the payment has an effect on Apple's next financial results.
via TechCrunch
