Apple pays France €500 million to cover a decade of back taxes

Apple has reportedly paid 10 years of back taxes to the French tax authority—around €500 million (over $570 million)—according to L’Express, a business newspaper.

The iPhone maker has been under pressure to pay taxes to European Union countries after it was found to have engaged in legal financial chicanery to drastically mitigate its tax burden.

Ars reported previously that Apple pays an effective 2.3 percent tax rate on overseas profits by using various legal tax mechanisms across several countries as a way to minimize its tax burden. Google, Microsoft, and many other large multinational corporations engage in similar behavior. (Ars has also detailed how such arrangements typically work.)

"As a multinational company, Apple is regularly audited by fiscal authorities around the world," Apple France said in a statement provided to the media. "The French tax administration recently concluded a multi-year audit on the company’s French accounts, and those details will be published in our public accounts."

The French business newspaper also noted that for several months, Apple has been negotiating with the tax agency, known as DVNI, adding that it may take until the end of the year to reach a final deal. DVNI struck a similar deal with Amazon last year and is now examining other major tech firms, including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

At the beginning of 2019, France imposed a "GAFA tax" (under the French acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) and is lobbying the European Union to come up with a similar EU-wide tax plan for tech giants.