Although at the beginning of this year the European Union issued a decision demanding the recovery of 13 billion dollars from Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), in the form of taxes due, no one collected the money. Ireland was supposed to take care of this, considering that Apple's subsidiaries are resident in its country, but the government didn't really bother with it, and Apple moved its operations to another tax haven.
The Irish government had to hire a series of tax administrators to collect 13 billion dollars from Apple to deposit in an investment fund. The money would be kept there until the legal battle between Apple and the European Union ends, those from Cupertino contesting the fine at the European legal institutions.
Ireland had published a series of documents in the summer in which it said it would hire administrators by mid-November to take the money and invest it. This did not happen, so the procedure will be prolonged until who knows when, because the authorities are in no hurry to do this, Apple having many Irish employees in the country.
Probably in order not to upset Apple and not to leave thousands of people without jobs, if the Americans were to leave, the Irish government defies the European Union and does not really want to collect the money. This situation could last who knows how long, considering that it will soon be 1 year since the fine was issued and the money was not collected.
"Ireland is set to miss a deadline to hire managers for Apple Inc.'s tax billions during an appeal of a European Union antitrust ruling, the latest delay in a saga that has dragged on for more than a year. The Irish debt office is hiring custodians and investment managers for the estimated 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in back taxes Ireland has been ordered to collect from the iPhone maker."
