Coca-Cola Co. said Friday it will pay $6 billion in back taxes and interest to the Internal Revenue Service while it appeals a final federal tax court decision in a case dating back 17 years.
The Atlanta beverage giant said it will continue to fight and believes it will win the legal dispute stemming from taxes and interest the IRS maintains the company owes from 2007, 2008 and 2009.
“The company looks forward to the opportunity to begin the appellate process and, as part of that process, will pay the agreed-upon liability and interest,” it said in a statement. Coca-Cola spokesperson Scott Leith declined additional comment to The Associated Press.
U.S. Tax Court Judge Albert Lauber on Friday issued a two-sentence decision and order ending his look at the case. The dispute reached court in December 2015, shortly after the company said it notified the IRS that it owed $3.3 billion more in federal taxes and interest for those three years.
In its Friday statement, Coca-Cola accused the IRS of changing how it let the company calculate U.S. income based on profits amounting to more than $9 billion from foreign licensees and affiliates.
An IRS spokesperson did not immediately respond Friday to a telephone message from AP about the case.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in 2015, Coca-Cola said it had been following the same method to calculate its taxable U.S. income from foreign affiliates for nearly 30 years.
In a company quarterly report filed with SEC on Monday, which included guidance to investors, the company said it believes the IRS and Lauber “misinterpreted and misapplied the applicable regulations in reallocating income earned by the company’s foreign licensees.”
The publicly traded company said it expected that “some or all of (the $6 billion), plus accrued interest, would be refunded” if Coca-Cola wins its appeal. It has 90 days to file appeal documents.
Last week, the company raised its full-year sales guidance after reporting a stronger-than-expected second quarter, boosted by product price increases.
FILE - The Coca-Cola logo adorns the side of a delivery truck May 15, 2024, in southeast Denver. Coca-Cola reports earnings on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. Coca-Cola Co. said Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, it will pay a back tax bill amounting to $6 billion to the Internal Revenue Service while it appeals a federal tax court judge's latest ruling in a case dating back 17 years. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
In the days since a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank and suspected Jewish settlers have rampaged through two Palestinian towns.
The violence comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure from his far-right allies after agreeing to the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange with the Hamas militant group. U.S. President Donald Trump has, meanwhile, rescinded the Biden administration's sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
It's a volatile mix that could undermine the ceasefire, which is set to last for at least six weeks and bring about the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, most of whom will be released into the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Escalations in one area frequently spill over, raising further concerns that the second and far more difficult phase of the Gaza ceasefire — which has yet to be negotiated — may never come.
Dozens of masked men rampaged through two Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank late Monday, hurling stones and setting cars and property ablaze, according to local Palestinian officials. The Red Crescent emergency service said 12 people were beaten and wounded.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, carried out a raid elsewhere in the West Bank that the military said was in response to the hurling of firebombs at Israeli vehicles. It said several suspects were detained for questioning, and a video circulating online appeared to show dozens being marched through the streets.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military launched another major operation, this time in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, where its forces have regularly clashed with Palestinian militants in recent years, even before Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there.
At least nine Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, including a 16-year-old, and 40 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said its forces carried out airstrikes and dismantled roadside bombs and “hit” 10 militants — though it was not clear what that meant.
Palestinian residents have reported a major increase in Israeli checkpoints and delays across the territory.
Israel, meanwhile, says threats from the West Bank against its citizens are on the rise. Earlier this month, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on motorists there, killing three Israelis, including two women in their 70s. That attack fueled calls from settler leaders for a crackdown in the territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz cast the Jenin operation as part of Israel's larger struggle against Iran and its militant allies across the region, saying “we will strike the octopus' arms until they snap.”
The Palestinians view such operations and the expansion of settlements as ways of cementing Israeli control over the territory, where 3 million Palestinians live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering cities and towns.
Prominent human rights groups call it a form of apartheid since the over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have all the rights conferred by Israeli citizenship. Israel rejects those allegations.
Netanyahu has been struggling to quell a rebellion by his ultranationalist coalition partners since agreeing to the ceasefire. The agreement requires Israeli forces to withdraw from most of Gaza and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners — including militants convicted of murder — in exchange for hostages abducted in the Oct. 7 attack.
One coalition partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned in protest the day the ceasefire went into effect. Another, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened to bolt if Israel does not resume the war after the first phase of the ceasefire is slated to end in early March.
They want Israel to annex the West Bank and to rebuild settlements in Gaza while encouraging what they refer to as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians.
Netanyahu still has a parliamentary majority after Ben-Gvir's departure, but the loss of Smotrich — who is also the de facto governor of the West Bank — would severely weaken his coalition and likely lead to early elections.
That could spell the end of Netanyahu's nearly unbroken 16 years in power, leaving him even more exposed to longstanding corruption charges and an expected public inquiry into Israel's failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack.
Trump's return to the White House offers Netanyahu a potential lifeline.
The newly sworn-in president, who lent unprecedented support to Israel during his previous term, has surrounded himself with aides who support Israeli settlement. Some support the settlers' claim to a biblical right to the West Bank because of the Jewish kingdoms that existed there in antiquity.
The international community overwhelmingly considers settlements illegal.
Among the flurry of executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in office was one rescinding the Biden administration's sanctions on settlers and Jewish extremists accused of violence against Palestinians.
The sanctions — which had little effect — were one of the few concrete steps the Biden administration took in opposition to the close U.S. ally, even as it provided billions of dollars in military support for Israel's campaign in Gaza, among the deadliest and most destructive in decades.
Trump claimed credit for helping to get the Gaza ceasefire agreement across the finish line in the final days of the Biden presidency.
But this week, Trump said he was “not confident” it would hold and signaled he would give Israel a free hand in Gaza, saying: “It's not our war, it's their war.”
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Israeli army vehicles are seen during a military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Israeli army vehicles are seen during a military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Mourners comfort each other during the funeral of Ahmad Nimer Al-Shaib after he was killed during an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the West Bank village of Bruqin, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Mourners attend the funeral of Ahmad Nimer Al-Shaib who he was killed during an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the West Bank village of Bruqin , Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Israeli army vehicles are seen during a military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
ADDS THE WORD SUSPECTED - A Palestinian youth sifts through the aftermath of an attack by suspected Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Jinsafut, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Palestinians look at Israeli military vehicles guard a road where a military bulldozer operates in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
Medics evacuate a wounded man during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed).
Israeli army vehicles are seen during a military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed).
Medics evacuate a wounded man during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed).
Israeli army vehicles are seen during a military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed).