Apple paid Ireland $17.1bn in tax last financial year. That is around 40% of everything it paid in corporate income tax anywhere in the world.

The figure comes from a company filing that breaks Apple’s tax down country by country, Reuters reported from Dublin. Apple paid $43.2bn in income taxes worldwide in the year to September 2025.

Ireland spent eight years trying not to receive most of it. It fought the bill in court alongside the company that owed it.

Why the number is this large

Apple says the Irish figure is “significantly higher” than the income taxes it accrued there.

The difference is a court order. The payment includes €13bn in back taxes that the European Union’s top court told Apple to pay Ireland in 2024.

Strip that out and the remainder is an ordinary year. The 40% share is a one-off produced by a decade-old case finally closing.

Apple did not say what the Irish figure would have been without the court order, and the filing does not separate the two amounts.

Why anyone can see this

Apple has not volunteered a country-by-country tax breakdown before.

New EU rules now require large companies to publish their finances broken down by country, MacRumors noted. That requirement produced this disclosure. The Financial Times reported the filings first.

The rules are the story as much as the sum. A number that was previously a matter of inference is now a line in a document.

Ireland fought to avoid the money

The European Commission’s competition chief at the time, Margrethe Vestager, accused Ireland in 2016 of granting Apple illegal tax benefits and unfairly diverting investment away from other countries.

Ireland then fought the bill alongside Apple for eight years. Reuters reports that it did so to defend its position as the location of choice for American multinationals in Europe, and the direct and indirect taxes they bring.

The ruling found Ireland had given Apple unlawful aid resulting in a tax rate below 1%, according to AppleInsider. The arrangement let Apple’s Irish subsidiaries attribute most profits to head offices that held tax residency nowhere at all.

Tax lawyers called the structure the Double Irish. Ireland closed it years ago, but the liability it created ran on through the courts.

How the case moved

The Commission opened its investigation in 2013 and 2014, examining Irish tax rulings dating from 1991 and 2007.

In August 2016 it ruled that Apple had received illegal state aid and ordered repayment of about €13.1bn plus interest. Ireland collected the full amount into escrow in 2018 while the appeals ran. Neither side wanted the money to move.

The EU General Court annulled the Commission’s decision in July 2020. The European Court of Justice overturned that annulment in September 2024 and sided with the Commission.

Ireland confirmed in 2025 that it received nearly €14.25bn when the escrow account finally closed, seven years after the money went in. Interest explains the gap between that figure and the original order.

There is a second 40%, and it is a different one

TNW reported in June on a similar-sounding figure from Ireland’s fiscal watchdog. The two measure opposite things.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council warned that just two companies, understood to be Apple and Microsoft, paid almost 40% of all corporate tax collected in Ireland in 2024. That was roughly €11bn. A third firm, understood to be Eli Lilly, took the share to 46%.

So one 40% describes Apple’s exposure to Ireland. The other describes Ireland’s exposure to Apple and one other company.

Sixteen of the world’s 20 largest technology firms run hubs in Ireland, and more than 100,000 people work in the sector there. The fiscal council has warned repeatedly that a corporate tax base this concentrated is a risk to the state’s finances.

Apple’s position

Apple has argued throughout that it paid what it owed and complied with Irish and international law. It has never accepted the Commission’s characterisation of the arrangement.

The company has also said most of its profits were taxed in the United States when repatriated. It employs more than 5,000 people in Ireland.

The comparison the filing invites

Country-by-country reporting makes numbers like this checkable. The technology sector’s record on tax varies widely.

TNW reported this month that Palantir holds £670m of UK contracts and paid £2m in UK corporation tax in 2024.

Apple’s other dealings with Brussels have gone less well than this one. It lost its court challenge over gatekeeper status under the Digital Markets Act in July, and this month it overhauled its EU App Store fees to settle a separate DMA dispute.

Ireland, meanwhile, still markets itself as a low-tax destination, and companies keep arriving. OpenAI added 250 Dublin jobs last month.

What the filing does not settle

Apple has not said what its Irish share will look like next year, once the back taxes drop out of the comparison. On its own numbers the share should fall sharply.

The filing is not public in full. The Financial Times and Reuters have both seen it. Nobody has published the underlying document.

The euro and dollar figures move with the exchange rate used. Reuters converted €13bn at $15.18bn on a rate of $1 to €0.8562. Different outlets have given the escrow total in different currencies at different points.

None of this tells you what Apple paid in any other single country. The breakdown exists, and so far only the Irish line has surfaced.

Nor does it show what Apple’s effective rate in Ireland is now. The filing reports what the company paid, not the profit it paid tax on.

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