7 ms·

Yes, it is Apple's problem and no, Apple is not a victim in this thing. The EU treaty is Irish law as well and lawyers from all over the union (myself included

by flexie 10y ago

Yes, it is Apple's problem and no, Apple is not a victim in this thing. The EU treaty is Irish law as well and lawyers from all over the union (myself included) have been looking on at this blatant violation of EU rules for years wondering how long multinational companies would be able to keep the schemes alive. The Irish people have voted for politicians who adopted the EU treaty which bans subsidies to large corporations. The Irish people benefits when subsidies to French, British or German corporations are curbed. Under EU law, Apple has been obliged to pay ordinary Irish taxes all along. The whole arrangement has clearly been illegal and it is hardly a surprise to Apple and its army of lawyers and accountants that sooner or later justice would catch up. Competitors that cannot secure such individual tax agreements are hurt by this. I sincerely hope that other multinationals with similar schemes will be next. Apple will likely bring this ruling before the European Court of Justice but it is very unlikely that they will succeed in changing the outcome. From a legal point of view this is a very simple matter and it is an embarrassment to the whole EU system that it took so long to do something about it and that other multinationals still enjoy tax subsidies in Ireland (and likely elsewhere in the union).

dogma1138 10y ago
>The Irish people benefits when subsidies to French, British or German corporations are curbed. Are you serious? Subsidies to German and French corporations were not curbed they were replaced by the ludicrous loans that the Germans and the French give out to the "poorer" and "less industrious" EU member states so they in term can go around and buy German goodies. And when this Ponzi scheme blows up because of a financial crisis they force you to take on even more loans to pay back the debt you own all while preventing you from writing off debt or going bankrupt with threats of shutting off your banks because you do not control your own currency.
- barking 10y ago
  They forced Ireland to 'take one for the team' and prevent contagion by repaying bad commercial bank loans from overseas banks to the failed Irish banks. In other words they prevented Ireland from doing an Iceland. They hinted that new, shared burden, measures, to be put in place, to cover such eventualities in the future, would be applied retrospectively to Ireland but they weren't. During the bailout term the EU/ECB adopted a far harder stance against the country than the IMF advocated. And doubtless on the back of this case there will be a legal action in Europe and a resulting large fine on Ireland. You just don't get the feeling that this sort of treatment would be given to Germany or France.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Yeah it wasn't pretty. Ireland was not allowed to default on its loans which was what they should have done. It did not control its currency or banks which are effectively controlled by the ECB. It could not repay some or all of its loans with its own currency by simply printing more of it and the only way of getting more currency was taking on more loans. What people also don't understand is that the laws preventing incentives aren't protecting the weak they are protecting the strong. Germany can set its corporate tax rate at 40-50% and while people would bitch and moan it would do nothing. It's a huge market, it has a huge and highly developed workforce and it's one of the most industrialized nations on the planet with a highly developed and diverse industry. It doesn't need incentives to lure corporations to set up shop and it doesn't need incentives to grow its own indigenous corporations and businesses. If everything would be equal as far as cost of setting shop, employment and taxation between Germany and Ireland. Neither Apple not anyone else would give 2 cents about Ireland when they have countries like Germany available to them. Many of these laws aren't protecting the smaller nations they are restricting them and preventing them from being competitive forcing them to be effectively dependent on the bigger nations for loans/credit which they give out to allow their industry to keep producing in excess. Anyone who thinks that Germany loaning money to Ireland so they can go around and buy Volkswagen and BMWs isn't a subsidy are blind or clueless.
    - toyg 10y ago
      > the laws preventing incentives aren't protecting the weak they are protecting the strong. That's not entirely correct. These norms were introduced to open up nationalised markets like telecoms, mail etc, which would otherwise remain forever locked on national boundaries. This allowed an equal field for businesses across the Union. Of course, established markets tend to favor the richest players. This approach is supposed to be complemented by infrastructural funds, where German and French taxpayers effectively pick up the bill for rebuilding Ireland or Romania to a state where they can compete on an equal foot. > Neither Apple not anyone else would give 2 cents about Ireland That's very unfair to Ireland. Ireland has a natural advantage nobody can take away: sharing a language with the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. That's worth a lot, in this day and age.
astaunton 10y ago
The issue is not that Apple did not pay tax, nor is it Ireland giving Apple a good deal. Ireland charged tax based on reported earnings in Ireland, not world wide, for a child company of Apple that says it is based in Ireland but has revenue income from around the world. The EU has decided that all revenue income for that company should be charged in Ireland, although the US say they have also paid tax in the US. Fundamentally Ireland is saying it did not give a "deal", the EU is saying it calculated the tax incorrectly and the US is saying that the EU's findings are based on no tax being paid elsewhere which was not the case. As was also pointed oout, Ireland seems to be the scape-goat for all EU decisions. The Irish bail out has already been mentioned in this thread, but for those who are unaware of what happened here is a simple break down. German companies bought binds in banks (like shares). When the banks started to fail, Germany told Ireland that the tax payer had to pay the bond holders all the investment money and the interest. However if the tax payer had purchased these bonds, they would have never received anything back. They also told Ireland that if they tried to burn the bond holders they would incur trade embargo's to stop Ireland trading in the common market (Ireland makes a loot of money from exports to Europe). So basically it was pay the bond holders or you will have no income.
- toyg 10y ago
  > Ireland makes a loot of money from exports to Europe That's the crux of the overall matter, from a political point of view. Ireland benefits from the European market disproportionately more than the EU benefits from Ireland. This is why Ireland ends up being "a scapegoat" - because nobody is particularly happy about their status as the onshore tax-haven of choice for healthy US multinationals, so every time they end in a pickle, they have very few friends (and with Brexit, they effectively lost their biggest one).
  - omonra 10y ago
    The word scapegoat implies being blamed for something they are innocent of. Here Ireland is clearly complicit with Apple in the tax evasion scheme and thus isn't a "scapegoat".
- flexie 10y ago

by flexie 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago

>The Irish people benefits when subsidies to French, British or German corporations are curbed. Are you serious? Subsidies to German and French corporations were not curbed they were replaced by the ludicrous loans that the Germans and the French give out to the "poorer" and "less industrious" EU member states so they in term can go around and buy German goodies. And when this Ponzi scheme blows up because of a financial crisis they force you to take on even more loans to pay back the debt you own all while preventing you from writing off debt or going bankrupt with threats of shutting off your banks because you do not control your own currency.

barking 10y ago
They forced Ireland to 'take one for the team' and prevent contagion by repaying bad commercial bank loans from overseas banks to the failed Irish banks. In other words they prevented Ireland from doing an Iceland. They hinted that new, shared burden, measures, to be put in place, to cover such eventualities in the future, would be applied retrospectively to Ireland but they weren't. During the bailout term the EU/ECB adopted a far harder stance against the country than the IMF advocated. And doubtless on the back of this case there will be a legal action in Europe and a resulting large fine on Ireland. You just don't get the feeling that this sort of treatment would be given to Germany or France.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Yeah it wasn't pretty. Ireland was not allowed to default on its loans which was what they should have done. It did not control its currency or banks which are effectively controlled by the ECB. It could not repay some or all of its loans with its own currency by simply printing more of it and the only way of getting more currency was taking on more loans. What people also don't understand is that the laws preventing incentives aren't protecting the weak they are protecting the strong. Germany can set its corporate tax rate at 40-50% and while people would bitch and moan it would do nothing. It's a huge market, it has a huge and highly developed workforce and it's one of the most industrialized nations on the planet with a highly developed and diverse industry. It doesn't need incentives to lure corporations to set up shop and it doesn't need incentives to grow its own indigenous corporations and businesses. If everything would be equal as far as cost of setting shop, employment and taxation between Germany and Ireland. Neither Apple not anyone else would give 2 cents about Ireland when they have countries like Germany available to them. Many of these laws aren't protecting the smaller nations they are restricting them and preventing them from being competitive forcing them to be effectively dependent on the bigger nations for loans/credit which they give out to allow their industry to keep producing in excess. Anyone who thinks that Germany loaning money to Ireland so they can go around and buy Volkswagen and BMWs isn't a subsidy are blind or clueless.
  - toyg 10y ago
    > the laws preventing incentives aren't protecting the weak they are protecting the strong. That's not entirely correct. These norms were introduced to open up nationalised markets like telecoms, mail etc, which would otherwise remain forever locked on national boundaries. This allowed an equal field for businesses across the Union. Of course, established markets tend to favor the richest players. This approach is supposed to be complemented by infrastructural funds, where German and French taxpayers effectively pick up the bill for rebuilding Ireland or Romania to a state where they can compete on an equal foot. > Neither Apple not anyone else would give 2 cents about Ireland That's very unfair to Ireland. Ireland has a natural advantage nobody can take away: sharing a language with the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. That's worth a lot, in this day and age.

astaunton 10y ago

The issue is not that Apple did not pay tax, nor is it Ireland giving Apple a good deal. Ireland charged tax based on reported earnings in Ireland, not world wide, for a child company of Apple that says it is based in Ireland but has revenue income from around the world. The EU has decided that all revenue income for that company should be charged in Ireland, although the US say they have also paid tax in the US. Fundamentally Ireland is saying it did not give a "deal", the EU is saying it calculated the tax incorrectly and the US is saying that the EU's findings are based on no tax being paid elsewhere which was not the case. As was also pointed oout, Ireland seems to be the scape-goat for all EU decisions. The Irish bail out has already been mentioned in this thread, but for those who are unaware of what happened here is a simple break down. German companies bought binds in banks (like shares). When the banks started to fail, Germany told Ireland that the tax payer had to pay the bond holders all the investment money and the interest. However if the tax payer had purchased these bonds, they would have never received anything back. They also told Ireland that if they tried to burn the bond holders they would incur trade embargo's to stop Ireland trading in the common market (Ireland makes a loot of money from exports to Europe). So basically it was pay the bond holders or you will have no income.

toyg 10y ago
> Ireland makes a loot of money from exports to Europe That's the crux of the overall matter, from a political point of view. Ireland benefits from the European market disproportionately more than the EU benefits from Ireland. This is why Ireland ends up being "a scapegoat" - because nobody is particularly happy about their status as the onshore tax-haven of choice for healthy US multinationals, so every time they end in a pickle, they have very few friends (and with Brexit, they effectively lost their biggest one).
- omonra 10y ago
  The word scapegoat implies being blamed for something they are innocent of. Here Ireland is clearly complicit with Apple in the tax evasion scheme and thus isn't a "scapegoat".
flexie 10y ago