Apple Tax this, Apple Tax that. We’ve been hearing a lot about it over the last five years, and a whole lot about it over the past couple of days.
It’s not the perceived premium that Apple charges for everything from ordering extra RAM on devices to overpriced iPhone cases to this ludicrous $19 polishing cloth, although that’d be a perfectly appropriate (if slightly misleading) use of the barb.
The Apple Tax is what pissed-off app developers have been calling the 27-30% cut that Apple takes from revenue that apps generate from users who purchase or subscribe through Apple’s App Store.
As of last Wednesday, April 30, though, it seems to be finally dead after a five-year saga through the US courts.
The Apple Tax: the backstory
Back in 2020, Epic Games sued Apple over the 27-30% take, particularly irate over sharing that much profit of its wildly popular game, Fortnite.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in 2021 that Apple had to give developers more of a chance to direct would-be buyers to purchasing options through avenues other than the App Store. Happy ending for developers, wasn’t it? Not exactly.
Apple continued on not quite as reformed and compliant as Gonzalez Rogers had apparently hoped for, and so on April 30, 2025, she ruled that Apple violated her order by not doing enough to halt the anti-competitive pricing measures that were supposed to have been enacted after the 2021 ruling.
“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers said. “This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.”
Apple listened up this time and nixed the 27-30% take. It was all avoidable, as far as Gonzalez Rogers saw it. As CNBC reported, “former Apple senior vice president and current fellow Phil Schiller did not want Apple to take a commission on web links, but Cook ignored him,” according to Gonzalez Rogers.
“(Apple had) a desire to conceal Apple’s real decision-making process, particularly where those decisions involved senior Apple executives,” Rogers wrote in a court filing on April 30, then added the stinger, “Cook chose poorly.”
The post So, That Apple Tax Thing That’s Dead Now… What Was It, Again? appeared first on VICE.
