Apple's Tim Cook traveled to Brussels to lobby ahead of anti-trust decision

Apple’s boss made a surprise visit to Brussels on Thursday in a bid to front-run a possible antitrust verdict that could cost the Cupertino, California-based tech giant several billion dollars in underpaid taxes allegedly owed to Dublin, the Financial Times reported.

The European Union’s competition authorities are expected to hand down a ruling on Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland in coming weeks, possibly after the next Irish elections are held in February.

A spokesman for EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager confirmed to the FT that Cook and the commissioner had held a private meeting, without providing any further details.

Whereas Irish tax authorities stand to gain in the immediate short-term, on a longer time-horizon a negative decision could hurt investment in Ireland by foreign multinationals.

MNCs’ tax arrangements in Ireland have long been a source of tensions between Ireland and some other European governments, who have frequently complained that Dublin undercut their tax rates and steals investment from their countries.

Indeed, even in the midst of the Great Financial Crisis some European governments even supported making financial aid to Dublin contingent on the country raising its corporate tax rates.

Mr.Cook’s personal visit might have been triggered by a recent ruling by the EU against Luxembourg and the Netherlands that they had provided improper tax benefits to Italian carmaker Fiat and US coffee chain Starbucks.

Vestager’s expanding probe into corporate taxes also came at a time of fierce criticism in Europe of multinational companies’ ability to pay much lower taxes than even so-called SMEs, not to mention the average citizen.

The FT cited research from Bloomberg Intelligence estimating that Apple could be left about $8bn out of pocket, with JP Morgan having put the worst-case scenario at $19bn.