The thing about having huge teams of lawyers is that you can easily find loopholes in the law where things that shouldn't be legal, and in reality aren't legal, become legal through accounting trickery. Ireland obviously hasn't pressed the issue because it's in their interests to be able to give big companies a competetive advantage through lower taxes, because it increases the chances of international companies stationing themselves in Ireland as opposed to other places in Europe. The EU certainly has ulterior motives (ie. getting Ireland to pay back debt) for doing this now, but it's still a step in the right direction.

Excellent news!!! I hope they do the same to all tax-avoiding companies, MS, Google, McDonalds...

I hope they spend the money on people of EU and not on migrants

good news, it should have been even more.

I am all for fixing loopholes, my questions weren't really questions. I was just trying to point out that the EU is just as scummy with their tactics. Let's hope the money is gonna be put to good use, the EU may have to wait a long time to get any of it though.

How is the US gonna react to this? Doesn't this also mean the US can't tax Apple again when they decide to channel the money back to the US? 

Its not just Apple, McD & Coca-Cola and tons more should be made to pay as well.
Its crazy how these big corporations get away with cheating tax's in Europe.

Just googled it, the US is angry

The US Treasury said: "We believe that retroactive tax assessments by the Commission are unfair, contrary to well-established legal principles, and call into question the tax rules of individual member states."

Last week the Treasury warned that the European Commission was in danger of becoming a "supranational tax authority".

Charles Schumer, one of the highest-ranking Democratic senators, said: "This is a cheap money grab by the European Commission, targeting US businesses and the US tax base. "

"By forcing their member states to retroactively impose taxes on US companies, the EU is unfairly undermining our ability to compete economically in Europe while grabbing tax revenues that should go toward investment here in the United States," he said.

I'm all for it. And I hope the Ireland government also faces some kind of fine for it.

It's unvelievable how low a country that already has one of the lowest corporate taxes can go. Letting Apple pay only 0.005% of their profits is ridiculous and well below the 12.5% (now 6.25%) tax that other corporates have to pay there.

It's just fair and it's not only related to US companies, edf (french company) was condamned for a french fiscal help.
And USA can't say much when they made their fiscal laws applicable in foreign countries.

Everyone should pay their due taxes. Apple could have paid the 12.5% tax rate, which is insanely low, but they opted to be dodgy about it and paid practically nothing.