Apple paid Ireland $17B in taxes last year, new EU filings show

Apple ↘ 0.63% paid Ireland approximately $17 billion in corporate income taxes in its fiscal year ending September 2025, a sum that accounted for roughly 40% of the company's $43 billion worldwide corporate tax bill, according to new country-by-country filings first reported by the Financial Times News Corp ↗ 2.28% on Friday.tradingview+1

The disclosure, made under new EU rules requiring large multinationals to report revenue, profits, and taxes by jurisdiction, offers an unprecedented look at how heavily Apple's global tax burden falls on a single country with fewer than six million people.

Back Taxes Drive the Total

The outsized figure was largely driven by the September 2024 ruling from the European Court of Justice, which ordered Apple to pay €13 billion in back taxes after finding that Ireland had granted the company "unlawful state aid" resulting in an effective tax rate below 1%. The ruling ended a decade-long legal fight in which both Apple and the Irish government had opposed the European Commission's 2016 determination that the arrangements constituted illegal aid.cryptobriefing+2

Apple's primary Irish subsidiary reported a tax contribution of $12.1 billion for the fiscal year, a figure that includes the back-tax settlement and ongoing corporate obligations. An additional $1.4 billion was paid under the newly enacted global minimum tax, which aims to ensure multinationals pay at least 15% regardless of where they book profits.thenews+1

The Irish Examiner reported that the filing, completed by Apple Operations International Limited based in Hollyhill, Cork, showed an effective Irish tax rate of 13.8% for the year, slightly above Ireland's headline 12.5% corporate rate.irishexaminer

Profit Per Employee Gap

The filings also revealed a stark disparity in how Apple distributes profits across Europe. A quarter of the company's global pre-tax profits were booked through Irish entities employing about 3% of its workforce — 5,575 people — yielding roughly $6 million in pre-tax profit per Irish employee. In Germany, Apple's largest EU consumer market with 4,089 employees, the figure was $51,000 per employee, and the company paid just $153 million in cash taxes there, or 0.3% of its global total.iclarified+1

Apple Microsoft Corporation ↗ 0.43% is not alone in this pattern. Microsoft booked 38% of its global pre-tax profit in Ireland last year, exceeding $7 million per employee, according to the Financial Times.tradingview

Ireland's Shifting Tax Landscape

The new transparency requirements are already giving tax campaigners ammunition to press for higher contributions from multinationals. Apple said in a statement that it is "consistently one of the world's largest taxpayers" and drew a distinction between corporate income taxes, paid where assets are located, and consumption taxes paid where customers reside.irishexaminer+1

Ireland's 12.5% corporate rate long served as a cornerstone of its strategy for attracting foreign direct investment. With the OECD's global minimum tax of 15%, agreed upon by more than 140 countries, now eroding that advantage, the country faces pressure to compete on other merits. In 2024, just three companies — widely believed to be Eli Lilly ↗ 0.88%, Apple, and Microsoft — paid almost half of all corporation tax collected in Ireland.iclarified+1