International review for July 2020

Ireland wins state aid case

The General Court of the European Union has found that two Irish tax rulings issued in favour of the multinational corporate group Apple did not constitute illegal state aid given by Ireland (Cases T-778/16 and T-892/16). The two contested tax rulings issued in 1991 and 2007 by the Irish tax authorities endorsed the transfer pricing methods used by group companies in determining the chargeable profits attributable to their Irish trading branches. The European Commission had previously found that the tax rulings in question constituted state aid unlawfully put into effect by Ireland and demanded the recovery of the aid in question (determined to be €13bn). The General Court’s judgment annulled the Commission’s decision on the basis that it did not ‘succeed in showing to the requisite legal...