Apple pays 17 billion in Irish tax after EU court ruling on back taxes

Apple disclosed for the first time how much profit it booked and tax it paid across individual European Union countries under new transparency rules, with Ireland standing out as a major recipient of payments. In the financial year ending September 2025, Apple reported $17.1 billion in income tax paid in Ireland, a figure the company attributed to the release of funds from an escrow account following a European Commission state-aid decision and a ruling by the European Court of Justice .

The disclosure comes after Apple lost a long-running legal battle with the European Commission in September 2024, when the bloc’s top court ruled that Ireland had granted the company unlawful state aid. The commission had ordered Apple to pay €13 billion ($15.2 billion) in back taxes plus interest. According to the Financial Times, Apple’s $17 billion tax payment to Ireland in 2025 accounted for 40% of its worldwide total, with the sum including back taxes from the dispute .

In Germany, Apple recorded a pre-tax profit of around $209 million and paid $153.5 million in income tax for the same period. The company’s German operations generated revenue of $2.72 billion and employed 4,089 people, including more than 2,000 engineers at its European Silicon Design Centre in Munich, its largest development site in Europe .

The new disclosures were made under an EU directive on public country-by-country reporting, which requires multinational companies with global annual revenue exceeding €750 million to publicly disclose income tax information for individual countries. Previously, such figures were submitted only confidentially to tax authorities. Apple stated that the new rules do not capture the full scope of its tax contributions, as they focus on corporate income taxes tied to where assets are held rather than other taxes, such as VAT, which are collected based on customer location .

The company also noted that a quarter of its global pre-tax profits in the year to September 2025 were booked through its Ireland entities, where it employs about 3% of its workforce. Apple employs 5,575 people in Ireland, home to its European headquarters, and 4,089 in Germany. The company has consistently argued that its profits are attributable to intellectual property developed in the U.S. and should be taxed there .