Apple receives €82.6bn dividend from Irish subsidiary

Apple’s main Irish subsidiary paid dividends totalling $99.4 billion (€82.65 billion) to its parent last year after recording a $33.8 billion pre-tax profit, newly filed accounts show.

The company paid out an initial $81.8 billion during the year ending September 2020. It subsequently declared and paid a further $17.9 billion after the reporting period.

The dividends were fully subject to US tax, the tech giant said. In the prior year, the company paid dividends of almost $250 billion to its parent.

The subsidiary reports a decline in pre-tax profits to $33.8 billion from $44.7 billion a year earlier.

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The decline came even as Apple Operations International posted a slight rise in revenues to $148.2 billion, compared to $140.9 billion in the prior year. A breakdown of sales shows $122.7 billion came from products, with the remaining $25.4 billion deriving from services, including AppleCare.

Apple Operations International is registered at the company’s Holyhill campus in Cork and covers almost all of the tech giant’s non-US subsidiaries. It acts as a holding company for a number of subsidiaries and carries out research and development activities.

Headcount

The subsidiary employed 51,255 people in 2020, of which about 6,000 are based in Ireland. A year earlier headcount totalled 47,337 people.

Staff costs, including wages and salaries, came in at $4.8 billion, as against $4.2 billion in the prior year.

At the end of the reporting period, the company had deferred revenue of $4.2 billion and expected $2.6 billion of this to be realised in less than a year.

The group incurred a tax charge of $6.15 billion last year as against $6.19 a year earlier. No breakdown is given in terms of taxes paid in the Republic.

Research and development costs last year totalled $15.5 billion as against $7.6 billion in 2019.

The latest accounts refer to the European Commission’s tax decision on state aid that ordered Apple to repay €13.1 billion, noting this is being appealed. It states that as of the end of September 2020, the adjusted recovery amount was €12.9 billion, excluding interest.