Business & Finance
Apple paid Ireland $17 billion in 2025 following EU back-tax ruling
New European Union disclosures show the payment, which includes recovered back taxes, accounted for 40% of Apple's global corporate income taxes.
The short version
- Apple paid Ireland $17 billion in corporate income taxes in 2025 under new EU disclosure reporting rules.
- The payment included back taxes stemming from a 2024 European Union court ruling that ordered Ireland to recover up to €13 billion in unlawful state aid.
- Filings show Apple booked 25% of its global pre-tax profits through Irish entities despite employing only about 3% of its global workforce there.
- Apple stated the figures focus strictly on corporate income taxes and do not reflect its total global tax contributions, such as value-added taxes.
Key facts
- Apple's $17 billion corporate income tax payment to Ireland in 2025 represented 40% of its global corporate income tax total, according to disclosures reported by The Financial Times.[9to5Mac]
- The $17 billion figure includes back taxes from a European Union dispute that concluded in 2024 when the bloc's top court ordered Ireland to recover up to €13 billion in illegal state aid from Apple.[9to5Mac]
- Apple booked one-quarter of its global pre-tax profits in the fiscal year ending September 2025 through its Irish units, where it employs 5,575 people, or roughly 3% of its workforce.[9to5Mac]
- The disclosures showed Apple booked $6 million in pre-tax profit per employee in Ireland compared to $51,000 per employee in Germany, where it paid $153 million in cash taxes.[9to5Mac]
- Apple maintained that the disclosures omit other contributions such as VAT collected in customer locations and focus solely on corporate income taxes linked to asset locations.[9to5Mac]