Apple filed its annual report with the US securities regulator on 3 November. It shows that it paid Ireland $5 billion in tax last year, 14 per cent of everything it paid worldwide.
Apple names Ireland because it has to. A new US accounting rule requires corporations to name any country that receives 5 per cent or more of the income tax they pay. Because Apple’s financial year ends in September, it is one of the last of the largest US corporate groups to come under the rule.
The totals are in the same report. Apple sold $479 billion of goods and services in the year, made $159 billion of profit before tax, and paid $34.6 billion of tax in cash. Alongside Ireland it names one other country, Singapore, where it paid $3.3 billion and where the report shows a top-up charge under the new 15 per cent global minimum tax.
One euro in every eight
Five billion dollars is about €4.4 billion. Ireland collected €32.9 billion in corporation tax in 2025, so Apple’s payment is roughly one euro in every eight. The comparison is loose, because Apple’s year runs to September 2026 and the Exchequer’s to December 2025.
Put another way, Apple’s Irish tax would cover almost the whole of the State’s budget for universities and research, or three times what it spends on the Defence Forces.
This is not a once off. Apple’s European report for the year before showed $4.8 billion of Irish tax owed on that year’s profit, close to this year’s cash payment. Apple’s Irish tax now runs consistently at about $5 billion a year.
Ireland now gets more tax from Apple than any country except the United States. Three fifths of what Apple paid worldwide went to the US. Ireland took 14 per cent, Singapore 9 per cent, and every other country where Apple sells shared what was left.
Where Apple says it makes its money
The report also shows where Apple says it makes its profit. Sales are counted where the customer is. Profit is counted where the company that holds the rights and books the sale is based, and where that company (legal entity) sits is Apple’s choice, within the rules.
Apple makes 35 per cent of its sales in the United States and reports 40 per cent of its profit there. It reports the other 60 per cent abroad, and a huge chunk of that is in Ireland. Its European report for last year put $35 billion of profit before tax in Ireland, about a quarter of Apple’s profit in the world, in the accounts of its Irish companies, chiefly Apple Operations International and Apple Distribution International in Cork
Apple is increasingly the odd one out among the big tech groups. Alphabet moved their intellectual property back to the United States after Trump’s 2017 tax reform, and now report most of their profit at home. Apple’s legal-accounting and intangible capital asset structure still runs through Ireland.
A decision made in Cupertino
For more than a decade the argument about Apple and Irish tax ran on estimates and a court case. Now there is an actually number in Apple’s own 10k report, and it will be there every year from here on.
Apple decides in Cupertino where to hold its intangiblke capital assets, and so where to book three fifths of its profit, within rules written in Washington and Brussels. Ireland collects the proceeds. It has no hand in the decision.
Apple is one of 100 US multinationals whose latest reports my ERC team has read for a new dashboard (coming soon). It shows, for each one, how much tax it paid in Ireland, where it reports its profit and where it makes its sales. We will update it as each new report arrives.
This post was edited with the help of Claude (Anthropic).
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