A RULING WILL be issued in the long-running case between the European Commission and Ireland over an alleged unpaid tax bill from technology firm Apple, of €13 billion, in the European Court of Justice on 10 September.

The case has been ongoing almost eight years and successive Irish governments and Apple have argued that the tax is not owed. The case has made its way to the highest court in Europe.

In 2020, the European Commission appealed a decision by a lower European Court that ruled in favour of the Irish State and Apple’s case that the company was allowed to keep the alleged unpaid fees.

In short, Apple’s intellectual property, such as the logo and name-brand, is what largely allows the company to generate profits in Ireland, by headquartering that section of the firm in Dublin and selling the rights of the brand to other branches of the business.

The European Commission argues that because the entities are based in Ireland, profits should be taxed through the Irish Revenue Commission.

The Irish State believes otherwise and has challenged the Commission’s claims by arguing its case breaches the country’s tax sovereignty.

Last November, a non-binding opinion from a European Court of Justice advisor recommended that the case be thrown out of the higher court and that a new judgment be issued in the lower court, after a second hearing.

Included in the opinion, which was seen as a blow to the Irish State and Apple’s argument, the Advocate General reasoned that he believed the General Court, or the lower court, committed a series of errors in law.

These errors included when the lower court ruled that the Commission had not shown to sufficient legal evidence that the intellectual property licenses, held by each of Apple’s international and European holding firms, and related profits had to be attributed, for tax purposes, to the Irish branches of the company.

According to the opinion, the lower court also failed to correctly assess the substance and consequences of certain methodological errors that, according to the European Commission decision nearly eight years ago, vitiated the tax rulings.

The decision on 10 September will be a binding ruling.