EU State Aid Rules as a Means of Promoting Equity within International Taxation: With a Focus on Inter Taxpayer Equity in Light of the Apple Case

The purpose of this article is to explore to what extent EU State aid rules may promote equity in international corporate taxation, whereby we focus on the notion of inter taxpayer equity. Upon the outlining of the analytical framework necessary to conduct such inquiry, we briefly describe the key takeaways of the Apple case decided recently by the General Court of the European Union (GC). Thereafter we analyse how close the decision in the Apple case comes to a stylised theoretical optimum of EU-wide inter taxpayer equity that can be reached in the EU with distinct tax systems. To account for the inevitable existence of trade-offs between different tax policy goals, we also aim to reflect on reasons that explain why the GC has not always gone that far.