Apple has received an unjustified tax advantage in Ireland for years and must now pay this money back. Google will then be fined for its price comparison in search results.

The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has imposed fines on Google and Apple. These are final and neither company can appeal.

For Apple, this means a hefty fine of 13 billion euros. According to the court, the company was treated unfairly in terms of taxation by processing profits from activities outside the USA from Ireland with numerous tax advantages. This began in the 1990s and continued until 2014.

In 2016, the European Commission ruled that the treatment constituted illegal state aid. The entire Apple group benefited from this. The EU’s big problem is that the offices in Ireland did not make the decisions. Everything happened from the USA.

Ireland and Apple appealed against this decision and were successful before the EU Court in the summer of 2020. However, an appeal by the European Commission decided differently: Apple must pay back 13 billion euros to Ireland. This judgment is final and an appeal is not possible.

Google Shopping monopoly

The €2.4 billion fine imposed on Google is not hidden state aid. According to Europe, the culprit is the Google Shopping platform. This is the product comparison service that ranked at the top of search queries and thus offered unfair competition. The European Commission decided in 2017 that Google was to blame.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, took its case to the European Court of Justice in 2021, but was dismissed. Now the European Court of Justice has made a final decision on the fine. Alphabet must pay 2.4 billion euros to the EU for unfair competition.