Apple's Back Taxes

Like most other global corporations, Apple makes huge efforts to avoid paying taxes. They have based their European operations in Ireland partly because the Irish government offered them big tax breaks, and they have finagled their spreadsheets to make much of their profit show up in Ireland rather than in the US.

But the EU has had enough:

Europe’s antitrust enforcer ordered Ireland on Tuesday to claw back billions from Apple over illegal tax breaks, a move that will ramp up trans-Atlantic tensions over how much global companies should pay to countries where they do business. . . .

The clawback from Apple, which covers 10 years of back taxes of up to 13 billion euros, or about $14.5 billion, from Apple, is the largest of its kind since the European Commission, the executive arm of the 28-member union, started going after member states that favored selected companies.

I obviously don't know if this decision is according to law, but it feels like just desserts to me. Apple benefits more than almost anyone else from the neoliberal global economic regime, so they can damn well pay their share of the cost of maintaining it. From each according to his abilities, as a famous political thinker once said.