Apple Has Reportedly Reached A Deal With France Over Paying Back Taxes

Apple agreed to pay USD 571 million to French authorities to settle a back-dated tax, French media reported.

“As a multinational company, Apple is regularly audited by fiscal authorities around the world,” Apple France said in a statement to Reuters. “The French tax administration recently concluded a multi-year audit on the company’s French accounts, and those details will be published in our public accounts.”

Apple is facing pressure from the French government as finance minister Bruno LeMaire tries to push through an EU-wide digital tax. The effort, which has been met with some opposition from other EU countries, would apply a 3 percent tax to the online revenues of tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

In 2016, the European Commission ordered Apple to pay USD 14.5 billion in unpaid taxes to the Irish government, saying Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to the U.S. tech giant. The EU said Apple paid an effective corporate tax rate of 0.005 percent on its European profits in 2014.―CNBC