Between Apples and Oranges: The EU General Court’s Decision in the ‘Apple Case’

Abstract

This contribution provides a brief summary of the EU General Court’s decision in the joined state aid cases T-778/16 and T-892/16 (‘Apple case’) and explores the main reasonings provided by the Court. In particular, it analyses the arguments related to the use of the arm’s length standard as an ‘allocation benchmark’ and the use of the OECD TP Guidelines for this purpose, including also issues of comparability and burden of proof. Finally, the commentary elaborates upon two more general implications with regard to this Court’s decision, namely the use of state aid law as a tool to tackle tax avoidance both within and outside the internal market, as well as the general approach towards ‘stateless income’. Apple case, state aid, arm’s length, profit allocation, TNMM, selectivity, comparability, TP guidelines, stateless income, tax avoidance