8 ms·

It's pretty obvious why Apple's appeal is based on procedural grounds and that's because the EC decision is against Ireland and not Apple. http://www.finance.g

• devoply 10y ago
  They have 231 billion cash on hand. So not really a big deal for them to pay a small fraction of that as taxes, as they should have done and therefore should not have this much cash on hand.
  • zip1234 10y ago
    I can't tell if you are sarcastic. Just because they have money doesn't mean they need to give it away. I'll bet Apple will spend it in a more productive way than any EU government would.
    • richardwhiuk 10y ago
      Productive for whom? For the benefit of EU taxpayers? Seems unlikely.
    • pluma 10y ago
      Clearly corporations shouldn't have to pay taxes. The money they spend already fosters the economy so they're already at least as good as any government. /s
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • zip1234 10y ago
        I'm not saying that they shouldn't have to pay taxes. I'm saying they should have to pay what is required by law in the jurisdiction that they are in. The EU going after them as a special case because they have a lot of money doesn't help anything. The EU should focus on fixing the source of the issue, which is the concept of a tax haven within the EU. Going after Apple doesn't fix the root cause.
        • pluma 10y ago
          If they didn't have a lot of money, they wouldn't have been in this situation and there wouldn't be anything to go after. As an EU member country, this is EU jurisdiction. The root issue was that they made a deal with Ireland that is invalid under EU law. That was fixed. With apologies to Office Space: They didn't punish Apple, they just fixed a glitch.
        • Oletros 10y ago
          > The EU should focus on fixing the source of the issue, which is the concept of a tax haven within the EU. The case has nothing to do with Ireland having low tax rates. And Double Irish has been closed
    • matt4077 10y ago
      Wow, you're going at this from completely opposite sides, but in almost identical superficiality :) The EU is pretty damn efficient, by the way. Mostly because it's one of the few governments that doesn't derive its impact from the power to tax & spend. But the money wouldn't even go to the EU. It goes to it's rightful owner: Ireland.
• anamoulous 10y ago
  The nullification of a member state's unfair tax law seems fine, but the retroactive application of the new/old tax law seems odd to me. How long were the EU getting their hackles up about Apple in the years preceding this charge (a citation would be nice)?
  • Oletros 10y ago
    Theere is no nullification of any tax law and there is no retroactivity in this case And, like in all the other case about ilegal state aids, the EU can go back 10 years since the start of the investigation
    • charlesdm 10y ago
      The problem, to me, lies in the fact that a multinational company gets punished because a member state fucked up. How is that fair to the company? Say I'm a balling billionaire, wanting to invest, and politicians in an EU country are willing to attract me by giving me a very generous tax break. There is no reason to say no. However, in this particular case, if ruled that this is state aid, a country gets rewarded with additional tax revenue for doing a bad job / acting like an amateur. They need to find a different punishment mechanism, because in its current state this just incentives countries to introduce half assed laws and systems.
      • Oletros 10y ago
        No, a company is not being punished. What the ruling does is fixing an ilegal advantage given to a company
        • charlesdm 10y ago
          So it's the responsibility of a company to make sure then that laws are properly made / voted / etc? Where does this end? Why exactly do we still need politicians then? Second, while such a ruling does indeed fix the situation, there are usually plenty of alternative ways of structuring a transaction to achieve a similar tax rate. Why would I ever bother making a deal with a country that has "screwed" investors over in the past?
• Hermel 10y ago
  Apple might be able to get away here for now, but laws will continue to be adjusted in order to make it harder and harder to arbitrarily move profits around. This is an ongoing process that has started years ago. These legal adjustments are all aimed towards making sure that profits are taxed in the country in which they are actually generated. In the worst case, this will end up as a cat-and-mouse game between governments and corporations and lead to a bureaucratic nightmare, which would be entirely avoidable if companies like Apple were more honest to begin with. And don't tell me that companies have a "fiduciary duty" to avoid as much taxes as possible in order to maximize profits. That's a myth. Shareholders are completely free to define the purpose of a company in its articles. And in fact, the articles usually don't say "maximize profits at all cost", but are kept general enough to allow for paying taxes as it was intended by the law.
  • lambdasquirrel 10y ago
    When an iPad is sold in Germany, does Apple pay VAT in Germany or in Ireland? (Serious question. I don't live in the EU.)
    • dageshi 10y ago
      If it's sold by anyone inside the EU either physically or online Germany receives VAT at the German VAT rate.
    • raverbashing 10y ago
      Germany
    • tankenmate 10y ago
      I'm fairly certain this is a case about corporate income tax (tax on profits) not VAT (tax on sales).
    • matt4077 10y ago
      It depends. If they sell it to a business they don't pay VAT at all. For sales to consumers they would now pay the customer's country , I believe that just changed about a year ago. Amazon and Luxembourg may or may not have been responsible for that change :)
• Oletros 10y ago
  > Low tax member states like Ireland have been under political assault for decades and this is the latest attempt to redress something the EU has no power over The ruling explicitly says that there is no problem with Irish tax system if it is open to ALL the companies. This is allegedly ilegal state aid because it is a sweetheart deal yo ONE company
• canuckintime 10y ago
  > Low tax member states like Ireland have been under political assault for decades and this is the latest attempt to redress something the EU has no power over. If the EU wanted a unified tax regime across all members it should have been designed that way from the outset, You're wrong, this is not about harmonizing tax rates. Ireland already has one of the lowest corporate tax rates which is 12.5%. However, through the Ireland deal/loophole, Apple was paying an effective rate of 0.0005%. Rectifying that is the point[1]. The EU specifically put these anti-state aid laws on the books decades ago, it's not new. Ireland will still have the ability to set their tax rates for all coporations [1] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm
  • charlesdm 10y ago
    So, the thing I am curious about.. what will happen when the first member state lowers its corporate tax rate to 0%? I can easily see that happening within the next decade or so (Hungary is at 9%, Malta at 5%, etc).
    • doikor 10y ago
      Question is that how does a state fund itself with that low of corporate tax? The entity that Apple is shuffling the money through in Ireland has 0 employees and no office and thus doesn't generate any other tax revenue.
      • charlesdm 10y ago
        Corporate taxes tend to only be a small amount of the amount of incoming tax. Personal taxes, i.e. on salaries / dividends / capital gains taxes tend to generate the bulk of tax revenues.
      • Retric 10y ago
        0.0005% is > 0% which is what they would get without this arrangement. In effect Ireland set's things up to collect a token payment by letting companies dodge other companies taxes. (ed: taxes paid by other companies.) This presents zero problems for Ireland and pisses off other countries.
• belorn 10y ago
  The ruling is not that novel, and can be seen as just an other in a long list of fair trade laws. If EU allows nations to give subsidy to specific companies, then what stop other nations from using tariffs, preferential treatment, quotas, or other things which international trade law has fought against in the last few hundred years. Sovereignty over fair trade has been given up by most nations, including the U.S. (through they are also the ones that have been active in pushing such laws). Ireland has a clear alternative, which is to grant such tax law for every company within their border. It would kill their budget, and bring down their own government, but they could do as is their right under sovereignty. Low tax is not illegal within fair market rules, so long everyone is competing on equal ground.
  • jholman 10y ago
    Ireland DOES grant that tax law to all companies within their borders, as the article clearly outlines. From TFA, among other relevant paragraphs: > It is important to note that the words “any aid” covers not only one-off deals between Ireland and Apple, but also any general provision of the Irish Tax Code that would encourage favorable treatment.
    • belorn 10y ago
      Corporate tax in irland is NOT 0.005 percent. It is, as you even quoted, a one-off deal between Ireland and Apple. The EU article simply covers any deal which would create such favorable treatment, and the key word is "distort competition". "any aid granted by a member state or through state resources in any form whatsoever which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favoring certain undertakings or the production of certain goods shall … be incompatible with the internal market.”"
      • jholman 10y ago
        There are no one-off deals, and Apple doesn't pay 0.005%. Apple pays Ireland 12.5% of all taxable-in-Ireland income. That's because that's Ireland's corporate income tax rate. Conveniently, because of the structure of Irish tax law, very very little income is taxable in Ireland. And that's more than is taxable in any other EU country. And, in fact, there's no country where very much of their income is taxable. Pretty awesome for them, I guess. When the bullshitters say "paying 0.005% effective tax rate", they mean "when you take all their revenue everywhere [in the EU], they pay 0.005% on that". That's not how tax works for any corporation ever.
• matt4077 10y ago
  I think the problem here wasn't even the low tax rate, but the special arrangements they made with select companies. Because that allows them to offer Luxembourg-style almost-zero tax rates to a few international giants without sacrificing their domestic tax base. Individual subsidies have been illegal under most circumstances for quite a while now, and giving them a 95% tax rebate is obviously almost identical in effect and morality (law to be determined). It's also a pretty classic case: Apple is going to have European headquarters somewhere, and any tax rebate they get is a loss of X in European tax revenue and a plus of the same magnitude for Apple's shareholders. It'd be stupid for the European countries not to cooperate (with the understanding of transfers to those countries whose competitiveness suffers)
• fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  You are missing the point completely. This case is not about lower or higher taxes. This is not the EU telling member states what tax rates they should have. This is purely about whether or not Apple got special treatment that is not available to other companies. The EU cannot allow the biggest corporations to go shop around for sweetheart deals that smaller companies have no chance of getting. [EDIT] Your EDIT contradicts your second paragraph. This case is about special treatment for a specific company. Whichever way it is decided by the courts, it does not affect the sovereign rights of member states to make tax laws as they see fit. They just have to apply those tax laws in a non-discriminatory fashion.
  • zigzigzag 10y ago
    This is not the EU telling member states what tax rates they should have. How is it not that? The EU is not supposed to have any power over tax at all. Yet here it is, telling Ireland to charge Apple "back taxes" against its will. The EU cannot allow the biggest corporations to go shop around for sweetheart deals that smaller companies have no chance of getting. Of course it can. And in fact it must, because tax is not an EU competency.
    • Oletros 10y ago
      > Yet here it is, telling Ireland to charge Apple "back taxes" against its will. This has nothing to do with the tax system > Of course it can. And in fact it must, because tax is not an EU competency. Of course it cannot, because it has nothing to do with the tax system
    • fauigerzigerk 10y ago
      >tax is not an EU competency Tax _law_ is not EU competency, but this case is not about Irish tax law. This case is about a specific ruling by the Irish tax authorities concerning Apple and only Apple. If a country were to give special favors to some companies and not others then that would violate EU rules that are supposed to create a level playing field for all. If you completely exclude tax rulings from consideration when it comes to competition regulation, then competition law would not be worth the paper it's written on. Every country could then use special tax deals instead of subsidies to help specific companies. That's exactly what state aid rules are supposed to prevent. [Edit] Please note that I have no opinion on whether or not Apple did actually get special treatment.