You would have thought that if someone was being made to shovel over £11bn into a nations coffers, the recipient country would be whooping it up but the Irish are a strange breed and far from eyeing up a cut in taxes or a installing some hospital equipment, they are doing all they can to make sure to show that they don't want it.
After a three year investigation which showed that Apple's headquarters was an empty office in Dublin which had no staff, the European Union have decided that the tech giant's tax arrangements enabled it to pay a tax rate of as little as £50 in taxes on every £1m of profit was illegal and they must hand over a cheque for £11 billion for tax that they had evaded paying.
Far from happy is Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, who has said that he 'disagreed profoundly' with the decision and would seek an appeal.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook threatened that if they had to cough up the amount of back-tax due, it would have: 'a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe' before strangely explaining that the company paid all the taxes it owed despite just being revealed they haven't been paying all the tax they owed hence the £11bn bill.
Ireland of course are concerned that if Apple are made to pay what they should rather than the pathetic amount, £50 in every £1m they make in profit which is presently thrown towards the Irish Government, they will up sticks and go somewhere else where they can evade paying the tax they should.
The EU's have other multinationals in their sights including with Amazon and McDonald's tax arrangements under investigation and and Starbucks ordered to pay up to £26m back tax due to the Netherlands.
I am sure that if Irish taxpayers tried the same thing and protested that if they were made to pay the tax they owed rather than throw the Irish Governments a few crumbs now and then, the Government's tax collectors would disagree just as profoundly and refuse to accept it, wouldn't they?
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