• PSOE wants Congress Committee to calculate Apple taxes owed since 2003
• Party says tax-evasion via Apple-Ireland agreement cheats Spain of revenue
Spain’s Socialist party (PSOE) has taken the initiative in the country’s Congress to make technology giant Apple Inc. liable for back taxes from its Spanish operation that the party says were evaded through a 2003 taxation agreement between Apple and the Republic of Ireland.
On Tuesday, the party asked the Congressional Committee on Finance and Public Administration (Comisión de Hacienda y Administraciones Públicas) to come up with a calculation of how much money in taxes Apple would have had to pay in Spain since 2003 had it not been exempt through its agreement with European Union member Ireland. The move by the PSOE follows a European Commission finding that Apple paid just 1 percent in taxes on profits made through its European operations in 2013, further reducing the amount of taxes paid on net earnings to just 0.005 percent in 2014.
According to Oxfam Intermón, the Spanish affiliate of global development agency Oxfam, Spain loses 59 million euros each year to tax evasion, nearly three quarters of that amount owing to large corporations and wealthy individuals in Spain paying minimal taxes through offshore tax havens around the world.
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