This feels an awful lot like a scam; Apple is explicitly told by the Irish government (the presumable authority on Irish taxes) that what they're doing is fine,

This feels an awful lot like a scam; Apple is explicitly told by the Irish government (the presumable authority on Irish taxes) that what they're doing is fine, then over a decade later the EU steps in and says "you can't do that. pay more taxes retroactively (to us)". This stinks of ex post facto lawmaking in order to get money from a corporation, and it seems there are a few of us who object to that. I'm all for changing the laws in the present, but I consider ex post facto laws a far worse solution than the disease.