Apple hit with a major setback in legal fight with EU

Europe’s top court’s legal adviser has indicated that an EU tribunal committed legal errors in its ruling favoring Apple (NASDAQ:) over a 13-billion-euro ($14 billion) tax order.

The adviser suggested that the case should be reviewed again, potentially posing a setback for Apple, Reuters reports.

In 2020, the European Union’s General Court upheld Apple’s challenge, asserting that regulators had not met the legal standard to demonstrate an unfair advantage.

However, Advocate General at the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) disagreed.

He suggested that CJEU judges should set aside the General Court ruling and refer the case back to the lower tribunal.

“The judgment of the General Court on ‘tax rulings’ adopted by Ireland in relation to Apple should be set aside,” he stated in a non-binding opinion.

The CJEU, expected to rule in the coming months, typically follows about four in five such recommendations.

The tax case against Apple was part of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s efforts to address deals between multinationals and EU countries that were perceived as unfair state aid.

The European Commission, in its 2016 decision, contended that Apple benefited from Irish tax rulings, artificially reducing its tax burden to as low as 0.005% in 2014.