Apple's $17.1bn Irish tax bill is now a line in a filing, not an inference

Apple paid Ireland $17.1bn in tax in its last financial year, around 40% of everything it paid in corporate income tax anywhere in the world.

Apple paid $43.2bn in income taxes worldwide in the year to September 2025.

New EU rules now require large companies to publish their finances broken down by country; that requirement produced this disclosure, which Apple had not volunteered before. MacRumors reports the figures were disclosed for the first time under those rules.

According to the FT filings, a quarter of Apple's global pre-tax profits in the year to September 2025 were booked through its Ireland entities, where it employs about 3 per cent of its workforce.

Apple employs 5,575 people in Ireland, home to its European headquarters, and 4,089 in Germany.

The European Commission argued that two Irish tax rulings allowed Apple to allocate most of the profits recorded by Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe to "head offices" that had no employees or physical premises.

Apple denied receiving unlawful state aid and said the profits at issue were attributable to intellectual property developed in the US and should be taxed there.

Apple says the Irish figure is "significantly higher" than the income taxes it accrued there.

Apple did not say what the Irish figure would have been without the court order, and the filing does not separate the two amounts.

The FT reported Apple booked pre-tax profits of $6mn per employee in Ireland compared with $51,000 per employee in Germany, where it paid $153mn in cash taxes, or 0.3 per cent of its total.

Apple told the FT it is "consistently one of the world's largest taxpayers" and argued the new disclosures do not capture the full scope of what it pays across different countries.

Apple said the figures focus on corporate income taxes tied to where assets are held, rather than other taxes such as VAT, which are collected based on where customers are located.

The European Court of Justice overturned the General Court's 2020 annulment in September 2024 and sided with the Commission.

Tax lawyers called the structure the Double Irish; Ireland closed it years ago, but the liability it created ran on through the courts.

Ireland confirmed in 2025 that it received nearly EUR14.25bn when the escrow account closed, seven years after the money went in; interest explains the gap from the original order.

Ireland fought the bill alongside Apple for eight years, according to Reuters to defend its position as the location of choice for American multinationals in Europe and the taxes they bring.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council warned that two companies, understood to be Apple and Microsoft, paid almost 40% of all corporate tax collected in Ireland in 2024, roughly EUR11bn; a third firm, understood to be Eli Lilly, took the share to 46%.

Sixteen of the world's 20 largest technology firms run hubs in Ireland, and more than 100,000 people work in the sector there.

TNW reported this month that Palantir holds GBP670m of UK contracts and paid GBP2m in UK corporation tax in 2024.

Apple's pre-tax profit per employee in Ireland is about 118 times its pre-tax profit per employee in Germany.

Apple's $153mn of German cash taxes equals about 0.9% of its $17.1bn Irish payment.

Apple's German headcount is about 73% of its Irish headcount.

Booking a quarter of global pre-tax profit through entities holding about 3% of staff is roughly an eightfold over-weighting of profit relative to headcount.