TAXES RAISE ‘EIRE’

$14.5B Apple flap

Will somebody please take the $14.5 billion from Apple that Ireland doesn’t want?

That’s the amount in back taxes that the European Commission has ordered Apple to pay The Emerald Isle — only the host country for the iPhone maker’s non-American operations doesn’t want it.

“It would be like eating the seed potatoes,” Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Tuesday on Irish national broadcaster RTÉ.

The harsh tax ruling — 40 times larger than the previous record ordered by the commission — ended a two-year investigation in which Apple and Ireland were found to be in cahoots.

Ireland’s unusual tax treatment reduced Apple’s effective corporate tax rate in the republic from 1 percent in 2003 to 0.005 percent in 2014, according to the commission, which serves as the executive body of the European Union.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook was quick to fire back.

“We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals,” he wrote on Apple’s Web site. “We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don’t owe them any more than we’ve already paid.”

Already the world’s largest taxpayer, Apple said that it would appeal alongside Ireland, thus ensuring it won’t be paying overdue Irish tax liabilities for several years — if ever.

But even if it paid today, Apple has 16 times the amount of cash and near-cash on hand to pay the commission. And its revenue of $220 billion over the past four quarters would have covered the tax bill in just 24 days.

“We expect no immediate financial impact to Apple,” Merrill Lynch wrote in an update Tuesday — a day in which the company’s stock fell less than 1 percent, to close at $106 per share.

However, the EC claims Apple further benefitted from the setup by attributing sales made in Europe, Africa, India and the Middle East to Apple Sales International in Ireland rather than to the stores that physically moved the goods.

Yet the treatment also secured Ireland’s reputation as a low-tax base for overseas companies like Apple, which employs nearly 6,000 people in the country. Indeed, on learning the commission wants Ireland to claw back the equivalent of $3,100 for each of its residents, Noonan practically had a conniption.

“The decision leaves me with no choice but to seek cabinet approval to appeal,” he said in a statement.