This is a deal Ireland has made for Apple - not Apple making a massive tax fraud. EU is interfering with the individual country tax system (to be honest I'm not in the details) which sounds a lot like many of the reasons The UK voted out.
Nobody should cheat, but this sounds like it isn't on Apple (get presented with a good deal by a country and accepting it isn't a crime) but more like the country it self
Yes, the US Treasury and yourself are both correct - the EU is a supranational regime. EU member states are not the highest power over what happens within their borders; in fact, their borders are basically just for show anyway.
That's not new or controversial. That is what the EU is and was always intended to be, and it makes no attempt to disguise it. And yes, that is why the UK voted out.
This is actually a natural fact of the single market. If your company can be anywhere in Europe and sell goods to the whole rest of Europe, why would you incorporate in the UK or Germany when you can incorporate in Ireland or Luxembourg and still sell your goods and services to the whole of Europe? It creates a race-to-the-bottom, with nations competing with each other for the lowest corporate tax rates in order to steal taxation revenue caused by economic activity across the entire EU. That is what Ireland did; they cut a special deal with Apple so all EU activity would get taxed there. The real scandal is that they are only being reprimanded for the arrangement; IMO the Irish government should also be fined and those taxes should be distributed to the member states who their policies harmed.
The EU has a single underlying problem: its politicians don't know how to do politics. They believe that stamping aspirations, like "freedom of movement", the single currency or open-door refugee policy in to law, regardless of the reality of life on the ground, is politics. That is completely wrong. Politics is the art of finding compromise, of tempering your aspirations based on what is achievable today and having humility when your policies fail.
All of these policies have been failures.
- Freedom of movement allowed Poles (with an average salary 1/4 of the UK) to become the single biggest country-of-origin for immigrants - overtaking generations of Indian and Irish immigration in only 12 years. As the recent Burkini fiasco demonstrates, the UK is probably the least-racist country in Europe. Even they thought it was too much change, too quickly, and wanted caps on the numbers.
- The single currency almost broke Europe's economy. Most countries have a form of Länderausgleich, as we say in Germany, which means money from rich areas (such as Munich) flows to areas with poor finances (such as Berlin). People are generally okay with it, because they're all Germans/French/Brits/whatever. That level of solidarity simply does not exist across EU states. Germans are not happy supporting Greece, because "they're all Europeans". Now the Greeks (of all people) have had their democracy reduced to a joke as they hold referendums and reject austerity packages dictated by Berlin, and the PM is almost in tears as he tells the nation they have no choice but to do it anyway.
- The open-door refugee policy is the worst, because it's not even official EU policy. It's just Germany, being so powerful in the EU, who has created all the problems. Now we have growing right-wing and islamophobic sentiments all across Europe, and the EU are being held over a barrel by Turkey. I'm scared there will be riots if they allow Turks visa-free access to the EU. How does it look when they refuse to compromise with Britain, but lose their convictions about freedom of speech and give everything to an authoritative Muslim nation? The nationalists are going to see it as proof of some conspiracy. Meanwhile, 2/3 of Germans are against the policy and even the left-wing SPD are now calling for caps on the numbers (hmm... didn't they just kick Britain out of the EU for asking for something similar...?)
Now, the failures of the single market are laid bare for everyone to see. No control of your borders, no control of your economy, no control even over taxation. Just surrender all power to the short-sighted failure-artists in Brussels, who declare fantasy policies while presiding over some of the most racist nations and kicking out the most multicultural ones.
