The New York Times reported the European Union authorities have been pushing some countries to work on their corporate tax loopholes to help the government sustain the shrinking public budgets and weak economic growth.

The Union lays the groundwork for a tough approach by proclaiming an investigation into how low tax nations like Ireland have helped large multinationals like Apple reduce their tax bills by billions of dollars.

The Reuters pointed out in the U.S. the corporate tax rate is as high as 35 percent of income while Ireland's tax rate is 12.5 percent. With the use of various complex international accounting terms like the "Dutch Sandwich" and the "Double Irish," Apple has managed to lower its tax rate on some of its income to as little as 3.7 percent in the previous year.

Apple confirmed it has not received any special tax treatment from Ireland. Yet, it uses Ireland's tax laws to use all its benefits.

The firm has been keeping some of its corporate assets in the country for international transfers that lower its taxes, a U.S. Senate subcommittee found that an Irish Apple entity named "ASI" was the company actually selling iPhones internationally.

How the process works shows that ASI uses to purchase finished Apple goods manufactured in China and resold them to ADI or Apple Singapore, which in turn, sold the goods all over the world. By doing this, ASI was not involved in manufacturing nor it included anything in Ireland to the finished Apple products it bought. But it has now booked a significant profit in the country when it resold these products to ADI or Apple Singapore. It seemed "minimal," but Apple actually avoided a substantial amount of taxes.

The Senate reported in 2012, Apple's foreign base sales income was about $25 billion but it avoided paying $9 billion in taxes on that income.

Similarly in 2011, it avoided $3.5 billion in taxes. The total amount of taxes that Apple avoided in two years was $ 12.5 billion, which was a huge amount.

Also, the Senate subcommittee found Apple has also been complicating its accounts by not reporting its U.S. taxes accurately.

The annual report of Apple reported it paid $6.9 billion as taxes in 2011, but it actually only paid the IRS $2.5 billion, according to its tax return.