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A new regulatory filing has revealed that Apple paid 40 per cent of its total taxes to Ireland last year, totalling $17.1 billion.
The company said that the amount it paid to the country was “significantly higher” than its income tax bill for the year as it had been ordered to pay €13 billion in back taxes by the European Union’s top court in 2024.
At the time, the European Court of Justice ruled that Ireland had provided Apple “unlawful aid”, which allowed the company to pay a corporate tax rate of under one per cent.
The case, which took eight years to be finally resolved in court, saw the Irish government take Apple’s side, hoping to maintain its position as the premier hub for US technology companies in the EU. The Financial Times reported that in 2024 three companies, widely believed to be pharmaceuticals company Eli Lilly, Apple, and Microsoft according to the paper, paid almost half of all corporation tax in the country.
Ireland’s low corporate tax rate, just 12.5 per cent, makes it an attractive location for multinationals. A quarter of Apple’s global pre-tax profits between September 2024 and 2025 passed through its Irish entities, where it employs three per cent of its workforce, the filings show.
It reported $6 million in pre-tax profits per employee in Ireland, compared to $51,000 in Germany, where it paid $153 million in taxes. Apple employs 5,575 people in Ireland, and 4,089 in Germany.
The tax information was revealed under a new EU directive that requires companies with a global annual revenue of more than €750 million publicly disclose tax information for individual countries.
