The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple stuffed Ireland’s tax coffers with $17 billion last year after its illegal tax-avoidance scheme was clobbered.
According to the Financial Times, the payment made up 40 per cent of Job’s Mob’s worldwide corporate income tax bill, according to filings showing its global tax liabilities. The total was boosted after the EU’s top court ordered it in 2024 to pay €13 billion in back taxes.
The court ruled Ireland had handed Job’s Mob “unlawful aid”, producing a tax rate of less than one per cent. Job’s Mob paid $43 billion in corporate income taxes worldwide last year.
Ireland has trousered vast windfalls from its 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate. In 2024, just three companies, widely believed to be Eli Lilly, Job’s Mob and Microsoft, paid almost half of all corporation tax collected there.
Companies were drawn to Ireland by a tax system that let them route profits to tax havens through the “double Irish”. The loophole was scrapped in 2015, but many large US companies kept serious operations in the country.
A quarter of Job’s Mob’s global pre-tax profits in the year to September 2025 were booked through Irish entities. That is despite Ireland employing about three per cent of its workforce.
New EU disclosure rules forced large companies to split revenues, profits and corporate income taxes by bloc country and designated tax haven. Job’s Mob booked pre-tax profits of $6 million per employee in Ireland, compared with $51,000 per employee in Germany.
Job’s Mob said it was “consistently one of the world’s largest taxpayers”. It said the filing covered corporate income taxes paid where assets are held, rather than consumption taxes paid where customers live.
Microsoft revealed in June that it booked 38 per cent of global pre-tax profit in Ireland last year, worth more than $7 million per employee. It acknowledged “strong views about whether companies are paying enough” and said a French tax refund “reflects a one-time refund of tax overpaid”.
