Author: Seamus Coffey

The US Treasury were obviously unimpressed with the response to Asst. Treasury Secretary Robert Stack’s recent visit to Brussels with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager responding that “it is the same argument as we have heard before”.

The US clearly feels it is an argument worth making and now Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has written a letter to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.  It is largely a repetition of the arguments heard before but there are some interesting elements.

On the State Aid case against Ireland in relation to Apple, Lew is pretty clear:

The Apple story rumbles on meaning that almost anyone saying the X multiplied by .125 equals Y can make front-page news (provided Y is a big number of course).  In very rough terms there are three possible outcomes to the investigation:

1. No adverse finding is made,
2. The 1991 advance pricing agreement, as revised in 2007, is found to be ‘wrong’ and different parameters are used to allocate profit to Apple’s operations in Ireland, or
3. Some portion, or all, of Apple’s profits (outside of the Americas) are deemed to be taxable in Ireland.