SAN FRANCISCO: A multi-billion-dollar tax bill imposed by the European Union could bruise Apple’s image more than its finances, which remain solid even as the trend-setting company looks for the next big thing.
Analysts interviewed by AFP saw Apple as being in position to fend off the blow from the EU demand that the iPhone maker pay a record 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in back taxes in Ireland.
But the ease with which the California-based company could write a check to pay the gargantuan bill was seen as potentially coming back to bite Apple by giving the impression it is greedily avoiding doing right by the public coffers.
“People are generally outraged… very wealthy people are using legal but not moral means to avoid paying taxes,” Endpoint Technologies Associates analyst Roger Kay told AFP.
“It’s a bad strategy to be doing that.”
According to its most recent earnings report, Apple had $231.5 billion in cash plus marketable securities at the end of June.
Of that total, $214.8 billion, or 93 percent, was said to be outside the United States, Apple’s chief financial officer Luca Maestri said on an earnings call.
