Howard Chua-Eoan, Columnist

Ireland Gets a Windfall Apple Picking Season

Corporations have been harvesting huge profits via preferential tax codes for years. Are the flush times over?

September 13, 2024 at 3:00 PM UTC

Howard Chua-Eoan is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering culture and business. He previously served as Bloomberg Opinion's international editor and is a former news director at Time magazine.

A taxing situation in the EU.
Photographer: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP

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Don’t feel too sorry for the tech giants. Apple Inc. and the corporation formerly known as Google got major-dinged by the European Union — €13 billion ($14.4 billion) for the Cupertino titan and €2.4 billion for Alphabet Inc. — for back taxes to the Irish government and platform rigging, respectively. But, as Parmy Olson says, the fines “are just a cost of doing business — pocket change, really — and the companies can pat their lawyers on the back for dragging the cases out in court for years with endless appeals.” (Apple’s market cap is practically $3.4 trillion; Alphabet’s is almost $1.9 trillion.)