The iconic Apple multinational or the giant Google are suffering from fiscal inspections by the Spanish Tax Agency.
The Spanish Tax Agency is investigating the Apple giant and its branches in Spain, following the Spanish journal El País, among other big businesses such as Google which had already been visited by the tax inspectors in its Madrid’s headquarters last June.
The Spanish tax authority has opened a tax inspection to Apple multinational and it is analysing the corporate tax’s, VAT’s and non-resident income tax’s paid amounts between the years 2009 and 2012.
Apple multinational had profits up to 304.6 million euros last fiscal year 2015, which meant a billings’ forty-per-cent growth. However, the Apple’s real profit’s amounts are even higher “because it has another branch acting as a sales’ commission agent that other group’s entities are carrying out in Spain through shopping centres or big commercial surfaces”.
On the contrary, this technologic multinational has only declared to gain around 3.7 million euros for which has paid a corporate tax of 3.3 million euros. That is why with this inspection the Spanish Tax Agency is trying to figure out is weather Apple’s selling prices to its branches, both in Spain or Ireland are correspondent with the market value or weather those branches are selling those products with higher prices in order to transfer the profit margin to Ireland, a loose-fiscality country.
The Spanish Tax Agency is carrying out its factfinding in two Apple’s branches, Apple Retail Spain and Apple Marketing Iberia.
This investigation is marked in a context which Spanish Treasury is trying to avoid those big technologic multinationals in Spain, such as Apple or Google among others, could transfer “its incomes to another countries through complex corporate structures”, as it is stated by El País.
In this regard, those businesses would try to take advantage of legal loopholes of countries such as Ireland or the Netherlands, where there are a weaker fiscality and tax agreements to minimise tax payments, with the goal to cut down the total amount of taxes to pay in our country.
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