Apple, Alphabet's Google Forced To Cough Up Multi-Billion Dollars In Fines As Top EU Court Rules Against Tech Giants

Apple, Inc. AAPL shares are trading lower in premarket trading on Tuesday, a day after the company unveiled new iterations of its iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.

Apple Penalized For Tax Impropriety: The premarket drop comes amid the news that the Court of Justice of the European Union gave its final verdict, upholding the European Commission's 2016 decision that Ireland should recover up to 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in back taxes from Apple for the latter receiving “illegal” tax benefits from Ireland over the course of two decades.

“Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover,” the EU court said. The reference is to Ireland’s 1991 and 2007 tax rulings in favor of two Apple group companies. These two companies, incorporated in Ireland, weren’t tax residents in the country.

The EU Court of Justice ruled that the corporate tax rates as low as 0.005% paid by Apple represented an unlawful subsidy, striking down a previous ruling from the lower-tier General Court in 2020.

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Google Fine Upheld: In a separate ruling the apex court of the EU upheld the 2.4 billion euros ($2.65 billion) imposed on Alphabet, Inc. GOOGL GOOG for misuse of its dominant position by favoring its comparison shopping service.

The ruling was in response to the appeal lodged by the company after the European Commission imposed the fine in 2017, with the latter arguing that Google abused its dominant position in several national online search markets by favoring its own comparison shopping service over those of its competitors.

After the General Court essentially upheld that decision and maintained that fine, Google and Alphabet lodged an appeal before the Court of Justice.

In premarket trading, Apple fell 1.38% to $217.86 and Alphabet’s Class A shares moved down 0.46% to $148.02, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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