Apple to pay France $571 million in taxes, report says

Apple has agreed to pay 500 million euros ($571 million) to France in back tax, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Apple confirmed the agreement, but would not disclose the exact amount. 

“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,” the company told Reuters. 

French outlet L’Express reported Tuesday that the deal stems from Tim Cook’s visit to France back in October 2018. According to L’Express, France was especially interested in low revenue reported (and, subsequently, low taxes paid) by Apple France in the last ten years. A deal was finally reached in December last year, the outlet claims. 

This is not the first time Apple has had to pay large amounts in back taxes in the European Union. In September last year, the company paid Ireland 14 billion euros, recovering what EU’s regulators called Ireland’s “illegal aid” to Apple. 

And Apple’s not the only company to pursue aggressive tax avoidance strategies internationally. In February 2018, Amazon settled a similar dispute with the French government, which claimed the retail giant owed it 200 million euro ($249 million) in back taxes. In 2017, France asked Google to pay a 1.12 billion euro ($1.28 billion) tax bill, but in that case Google emerged victorious as a EU tribunal decided Google’s Irish subsidiary was not taxable in France. 

In December 2018, France passed legislation to impose a special tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, after failing to convince the whole European Union to do so.