Apple Paid Ireland $17 Billion in Corporate Income Taxes Last Year, EU Filings Show

Apple paid Ireland $17 billion in corporate income taxes last year, roughly 40% of the $43 billion it paid worldwide, according to new EU country-by-country filings reviewed by The Financial Times. The figures were disclosed under new EU rules requiring large companies to report revenues, profits, and corporate income taxes by country across the bloc and designated tax havens.



The figure was significantly higher after the EU's top court ordered Apple in 2024 to pay €13 billion in back taxes, ruling that the company had received unlawful state aid that resulted in a tax rate of less than 1%. The ruling ended a legal battle that spanned more than a decade, as detailed in our coverage of the decision. Apple has consistently maintained that it complied with Irish tax law and has disputed the European Commission's findings.


Ireland's current corporate tax rate is 12.5%, and the country has reaped major windfalls from U.S. technology companies. In 2024, just three companies - widely believed to be Eli Lilly, Apple, and Microsoft - paid almost half of all corporation tax collected there.

The dispute stemmed from the country's former "double Irish" tax structure, which allowed multinational companies to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. Although the loophole was closed in 2015, many major U.S. companies maintained significant operations there.

A quarter of Apple's global pre-tax profits in the year to September 2025 were booked through its Ireland entities, where it employs about 3% of its workforce. In Ireland, the company recorded pre-tax profits of $6 million per employee, compared with $51,000 per employee in Germany. It employed 5,575 people in Ireland, home to its European headquarters, and 4,089 in Germany, where it paid $153 million in cash taxes, or 0.3% of its total.

Apple said it was "consistently one of the world's largest taxpayers" and noted that the filings report corporate income taxes, not consumption taxes such as value-added taxes, which are paid where consumers are based.