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Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

321 points by uladzislau 9y ago

cmansley 9y ago
Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Shouldn't it be "Ireland close your loopholes!"
- Voloskaya 9y ago
  > Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Why do you assume no one is? This has been discussed at length during the last French presidential election for example. See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-has-some-awkward-questions-for-irish-leader-on-tax-policy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-ha....
  - pcurve 9y ago
    Found another article. https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0916/905202-donohoe-eu-tax-plan/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0916/905202-donohoe-eu-tax-plan... "According to one diplomat, the strongest level of opposition came from Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Luxembourg was said to have raised a series of practical problems about the proposal, arguing it would introduce a lot of complexity into the tax system." Go figure. Noncompetitive EU countries complaining the loudest.
    - 21 9y ago
      Can't help notice that three of the four are tiny countries. And the fourth, Ireland, is not that big either. I'm starting to thing that there might also be a geopolitic reason to become a tax heaven, not just an economic one, something along the line "Let's convince Amazon to book profits here, and there let's see who will dare mess with us, given that Amazon will be protected by USA"
      - adventured 9y ago
        For a small nation, it's one of the few outsized competitive advantages they can try to offer (that is, something they can do that can benefit them far beyond the scale of their population). Ireland's corporate tax rate + joining the European single market, resulted in one of the greatest booms in modern economic history. From $40 to $280 billion in GDP in just 17 years. Given the extreme nature of the benefits, a small nation is probably crazy not to do it.
        Boothroid 9y ago
        Is that inflation adjusted?
    - barrkel 9y ago
      France has a lower effective rate of tax than Ireland's for companies in the CAC40 - 8%. There's a lot of hypocrisy whirling around about tax. The larger a company is, the lower tax it pays in France owing to various breaks and deals. A bunch of this criticism is just another way of saying France First.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > Why do you assume no one is? Because they're picketing Apple and not the National Assembly?
    - Voloskaya 9y ago
      As far as I know, the French national assembly doesn't make the law in Ireland, so I fail to see the point.
    - owebmaster 9y ago
      Would you be discussing the occupation of the National assembly here in HN? Did you the last time?
- bauerd 9y ago
  Maybe people are mad at their government but more mad at Apple?
  - bdibs 9y ago
    More would be accomplished by protesting the government that allows certain loopholes. Apple is a public company with an obligation to its shareholders to make money, not pay erroneous taxes.
    - bauerd 9y ago
      >More would be accomplished by protesting the government that allows certain loopholes. I'm not so sure about this as I'd question that it's possible for a single government to close loopholes on its own. Arguably yes, governments should be pressured into closing "certain loopholes", but not because this necessarily leads to a better outcome. >Apple is a public company with an obligation to its shareholders to make money Not everyone agrees that companies ought to maximise only shareholder value.
      - xiphias 9y ago
        Shareholder value and making money are not the same thing (and the job of the CEO is to maximize shareholder value, not money). I'm a Tesla shareholder, and I would be quite disappointed if the company would stop caring about scaled sustainability and would just stay as a luxury car brand (which would make it easy for Tesla to not lose money on research).
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        > I'm not so sure about this as I'd question that it's possible for a single government to close loopholes on its own. That's the argument against signing global warming treaties, isn't it?
        bauerd 9y ago
        It's not an argument against closing loopholes.
- jules 9y ago
  The problem is the EU, not Ireland. France should be able to tax apple on its own.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    France does tax Apple on its own. They still pay VAT of course as well as on any profits classified as French (e.g. retail). The question is then everything else whose origin isn’t obvious.
    - rsj_hn 9y ago
      The issue is using various IP transfer schemes to make it look like their French division has no profits while the Isle of Man division is earning billions.
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Technically speaking, almost all of the value is created in the USA via R&D. I don’t think Apple has any significant amount of R&D creation in France (hopefully a lab or two). Then there is some by order manufacturing in China, along with component acquisition, leaving just retail and distribution for local markets. Now, Apple can and has done some dodgy IP transfers to tax havens, but France wouldn’t have been the wronged party in that, the USA would be.
        realusername 9y ago
        Value is only created when you sell products, not when you create them (and especially not in R&D which is gamble cost for most companies), otherwise all the startups would be rich. If there would be no value creation in France, Apple would not have any business there.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Ridiculous, how would that even work? Profit is “sales - expenses.” So how would Apple account for the R&D in the states, or does Apple France just want to tax them assuming all the inputs don’t exist? That’s why Apple USA sells iPhones to Apple France at some price above hardware production costs. It doesn’t make sense any other way. Value isn’t created on sale, it is only realized as money at that point.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- barrkel 9y ago
  Ireland is closing its loopholes. Specifically, if a company is managed outside the country but registered in the country, it was considered non-resident for tax purposes. That changed in 2014, with a grandfathered provision that expires in 2020. http://www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3410898/Ireland-Changes-to-Irish-corporate-residence-rules.html http://www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3410898/Irelan...
pcurve 9y ago
What's stopping EU from getting their acts together and impose corporate equivalent of Alternative Minimum Tax for companies doing business there?
- iamthirsty 9y ago
  Uh, money? Seems like an obvious one.
- dreta 9y ago
  Lobbying.
- Voloskaya 9y ago
  Because to do that all the EU contries would need to agree. How do you go about convincing Ireland to vote for something like that?
- pmyteh 9y ago
  The EU doesn't have general legislative competence for tax: it's reserved to the member States. To change this would (IIRC) require a new treaty, and the perceived loss of sovereignty would go down like a lead balloon with many of the governments - so that won't happen at least in the short term.
beloch 9y ago
I really respect this kind of activism. Fair taxation certainly isn't the sexiest topic to hold a protest about, but it is actually a huge fundamental issue for us today. Individuals, and Corporations we treat as legal individuals, produce value for our society in several ways, and paying taxes is one of them. When wealthy individuals or large corporations dodge taxes via off-shore firms, etc. they erode the basis of public services and increase the tax burden on less wealthy individuals and smaller companies. Worse yet, they frequently seem to do this by subverting our public officials. It's reached the point where our regulatory institutions and even our government appear severely compromised by the financial concerns of corporations. If our elected representatives need corporate money just to get elected, how can we rely on them to represent us on issues that might run against the interests of those corporate donors? Direct public action, such as protests, seem to be the last recourse left available to us on certain topics. When you have a large, enormously successful company sitting on gargantuan cash reserves not paying its taxes and getting away with it, you have a problem. Apple probably isn't even the worst offender, but they're famous and have a built in hate-club (anything that inspires fans also inspires anti-fans). While this protest only had a few hundred supporters, that's pretty incredible for this kind of topic. Hopefully this sort of protest happens more often and gives tax-evading corporations pause.
- walshemj 9y ago
  True but as some one I know said about the 35 hour working "funny how its always the non French companies that got raided"
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Why is it funny that these activists focus on foreign companies selling in France but not paying taxes on those sales? Seems perfectly understandable to me why foreign firms behaving like Apple would be the target.
    - kemiller 9y ago
      The French were primary architects of the EU. It's a bit rich to complain now that Ireland and Apple are taking advantage of its rules.
cdancette 9y ago
While the root of the problem is not the companies' action (they do what is logical for their own benefits), this is very good to raise public awareness. This could be seen as a negative externality, because it has a very negative impact on the economy of the countries they're operating in. They're basically sucking money out of the country without contributing back what they should
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
downandout 9y ago
These people are protesting against the wrong entity. Apple followed the tax laws at the time, so they should protest against their government for creating loopholes that can and always will be exploited by those with the resources to do so. Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, which includes taking advantage of any and all available strategies to reduce their tax burden.
- cdancette 9y ago
  While you're right, I think it's still a good thing, as apple is obviously on the border of legality (in fact, most of those tax evasion schemes are not proven legal). I read that they estimated that each technique they used had a 1/4 chance of being judged illegal in court. Moreover, it raises awareness, and it is a good thing to blame publicly those society to help governments change the rules. If no one complains, why do anything?
  - visarga 9y ago
    You buy an iPhone in France, tax doesn't go to fund the French people, it goes into an offshore. You tell them to stop it, they find another loophole, even more protracted. That's quite upsetting. So, Apple exploits both China and Europe to make a buck.
- nraynaud 9y ago
  Nope, 1)they don’t have a fiduciary duty to anyone in Europe 2) European doctrine in accounting is not that you can do anything as long as you don’t break the rules, but that you should account in a way that reflect the truth as much as possible within the rules 3) the European doctrine of tax law is that you should tax your profit where they are made 4) your headquarter for European tax purpose is not the address in your letterhead, but where the orders tend to radiate from.
  - prepend 9y ago
    They are a US company. Fiduciary duty is per parent company. The complaint isn’t about the French subsidiary not paying taxes, but for parent.
alfithehermutt 9y ago
Respect. Id love to see the alt right and hard/extreme/radical/(or whatever else you are calling)the alt-left to do the same rather then attacking poor citizens.
- steinerj 9y ago
  wat
PrimalDual 9y ago
Pardon my ignorance but I thought Apple largely obeyed the law. Shouldn’t these people be protesting the government that fails to tax Apple justly?
- Joakal 9y ago
  > “Apple must stop denying the tax practices highlighted by the European Commission’s investigation, withdraw its appeal to the European Court of Justice and pay its fine of 13 billion euros as quickly as possible,” said Aurélie Trouvé, spokesman for Attac, according to the release. A blurb from article. It looks like the government already went after Apple.
  - devereaux 9y ago
    The protesters may not want to let justice run its course.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    They sound misinformed. The 13 billion euros is not a fine, it's back taxes that the EU says Apple should have paid to Ireland. Yes, this is relevant; Apple is not being punished¹, they're just being told to fulfill their obligations. ¹I'm not saying they should or shouldn't be.
    - toyg 9y ago
      Potato, potahto. Apple must pay and Ireland must collect, dropping their insulting appeal. Whether it's a fine or backdated taxes is relatively irrelevant at this point.
- westiseast 9y ago
  Ireland allowed Apple a loophole where they were incorporated there, but non-resident, and therefore no tax. It was a sweetheart deal and Ireland got jobs and investment. The EU said no, wants the back tax to be paid.
  - 9y ago
21 9y ago
To those saying that Apple has a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? But on the contrary, Apple highlights in a lot of their presentation how green and environmentally conscious they are, going above and beyond what the laws require: https://www.apple.com/environment/ https://www.apple.com/environment/ Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money than you lose by paying for greener technologies? If people can make avoiding paying taxes seen in the same light, things will change. I wait for the day this page exists: https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/
- iiiggglll 9y ago
  > I wait for the day this page exists: > https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ Not quite what you mean, but there's this, just posted within the last month: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple-tax-payments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple...
- jedmeyers 9y ago
  > shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? No, because they believe that showing that they care about the environment more than the laws require will result in increased profits, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
- toyg 9y ago
  > Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money There is a generational issue as well. Cook (and before him Jobs) grew up in the '70s, when the political upheavals of the '60s had started to rot. The main ideals that survived that age were environmentalism and racial/sexual equality - likely because they could be coupled with aggressive capitalism relatively painlessly. What "big values" do companies like Apple push, today? Environmentalism and racial/sexual equality. Fair taxation is an issue that started to be considered only since the late '90s, and really went mainstream only with Occupy. In the '60s and '70s high taxes were normal (the legacy of New Deal and war effort in US, and socialist movements in Europe); in the '80s and '90s cutting taxes became a mantra, a shortcut to political victory. By the early 2000s the cracks started to show. As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation.
VeronicaJJ123 9y ago
May be France's shitty tax regime is more to blame here. French government should work with Apple to come up with a simplified tax code or show some balls and expel Apple from the country.
jokoon 9y ago
I was talking to a teacher in management who worked with finance, he told me that tax havens will never get solved to this day. Every developed country has its own tax haven. Even if a country manages to ban banks from transferring money to a tax haven, businesses would move to other countries or find other loopholes. It's a race to the bottom. I guess the only thing that would solve the situation is a global agreement against tax havens, something that would require a lot of diplomatic work between countries, so I guess the UN would be involved somehow? I hear so many people ranting about the government increasing their taxes, so often in their anger they sympathize with companies who use tax havens, surprisingly, saying it's the fault of politicians and their whole "gang". I am still waiting for voters to be attentive to this not sexy problem of taxation, and maybe, maybe, if large companies's image suffer from it, maybe things will move... But it would require citizens to at least be aware of the accounting of all of this...
- tedeh 9y ago
  This is already starting to happen, see for example AEOI: http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinformation.htm http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinfo... I believe governments (some of them, starting in Europe...) may very well be on their way towards harmonised tax levels because there is just so much money they are missing out on and they know it. Ireland may be reaping most of the benefit as it stands right now, but it is probably clear that a slightly higher tax in Ireland and a slightly lower one in other European countries may well net Ireland more in the end anyway. If large megacorporations will be as affected by this general trend as small business owners remains to be seen I guess - I'm not too optimistic about that.
  - jokoon 9y ago
    I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I'm doubtful about those initiatives. Tax experts seem to be 10 steps ahead of legislators, not to mention lobbyists. I really want to believe that tax havens could be solved, but if you think about it, it's a very hard problem and nobody has enough political capital to solve it. Even people who are in power have little interest in trying to improve the situation, and I doubt that voters would really give any damn, not to mention that there are many small businesses who already benefit from tax havens too.
oldandtired 9y ago
Taxation, like all things mandated by any government, is regulated by the legislation put in place by the respective governments. Everyone is entitled to use said legislation to minimise their burdens, everyone. The problem that arises is that governments do not manage their responsibilities in these areas (or pretty much every area they have legislative control over) in any adequately honest way. Instead of everyone being treated in the same way (including any entities created by fiat such as companies, etc) equally, we see all governments make special cases for various segments. So we see varying rates of taxes being applied across the population. Within that, what is never brought to account is how that government uses those funds. Many years ago, if I heard it correctly, a new taxation regime was to be brought into a certain country. One of the ideas put forward internally was that a transaction tax be levied against all transactions passed through the banking systems use in that country. From what I gathered, it was something like, 1/100 currency unit per 100 currencies units. The initial estimation (from what was conveyed) was that this would raise enough taxation to be able to remove all other taxation methods (including income taxes, sales taxes, government duties, etc). The richest companies and individuals would (by the nature of their transaction) pay the majority of this. It would also gather tax from all money laundering and criminal activities. The burden on the least able members and small companies, etc would be less than what they were currently paying. From what was conveyed, this specific option was given the death knell due to it being an incredibly hard sell to the country because all major companies and all major welfare groups would come out against this. They settled for something that ended up not being capable of decreasing the basic taxation burden on the general non-business community. The taxation law would have gone from 30,000+ pages down to probably less than 50 pages. So how do you expect any sense to arise in this area?
qengho 9y ago
Taxation is theft.
- gohbgl 9y ago
  True, funny how it's never "I also want to pay less taxes".
- dennis_jeeves 9y ago
  Upvoted your comment. Funny how people cannot see the obvious. Not many people would pay taxes - unless threatened with violence.
nattmat 9y ago
Norway's pension fund has also started putting pressure on companies it holds shares in, among them Apple. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-tax/norways-wealth-fund-turns-spotlight-on-company-tax-and-pay-idUSKBN1790UA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-tax/norways-we...
dingo_bat 9y ago
How hard is it to solve the tax problem? France should abolish all income taxes, and put a 100% sales tax on iphone. Problem solved. Apple can dodge as much income taxes as they want.
- evgen 9y ago
  Then Apple stops selling in France and continues to sell in Belgium, Germany, Spain, etc and people drive them into France by the truckload. Or Amazon just delivers them via post. No taxes to France at all. Problem solved.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    That's ok. I'm sure sales will take a substantial hit if people cannot walk into a store and buy it. I mean there's a reason Apple sells directly in France, right?
    - evgen 9y ago
      Substantial? I doubt it. While Apple does a lot of retail volume, the big money-makers like the iPhone can be drop-shipped from anywhere in the EU. There are 20 Apple stores in France, but millions of iPhones there; I doubt more than 20% of French iPhone users purchased at an Apple store, and probably closer to 5%.
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        > Substantial? I doubt it. It must be, otherwise why would Apple even have a retail channel in France? I think the number would be closer to 50%. Keep in mind that iphones are purchased at all sorts of retailers apart from istores.
spodek 9y ago
Helping people install Linux to migrate away from Apple might make their protests more effective.
s3nnyy 9y ago
I think it is pretty normal for mega-corps to do tax-evasion activities, otherwise they would not be mega-corps.
LeeHwang 9y ago
I really respect this. We need to publically shame and boycott companies that hide their money and refuse to pay taxes. The government isn't doing anything, but we can !
hartator 9y ago
Apple pays 20% VAT on all their products. It's hardly notging.

321 points by uladzislau 9y ago

Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Shouldn't it be "Ireland close your loopholes!"

Voloskaya 9y ago
> Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Why do you assume no one is? This has been discussed at length during the last French presidential election for example. See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-has-some-awkward-questions-for-irish-leader-on-tax-policy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-ha....
- pcurve 9y ago
  Found another article. https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0916/905202-donohoe-eu-tax-plan/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0916/905202-donohoe-eu-tax-plan... "According to one diplomat, the strongest level of opposition came from Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Luxembourg was said to have raised a series of practical problems about the proposal, arguing it would introduce a lot of complexity into the tax system." Go figure. Noncompetitive EU countries complaining the loudest.
  - 21 9y ago
    Can't help notice that three of the four are tiny countries. And the fourth, Ireland, is not that big either. I'm starting to thing that there might also be a geopolitic reason to become a tax heaven, not just an economic one, something along the line "Let's convince Amazon to book profits here, and there let's see who will dare mess with us, given that Amazon will be protected by USA"
    - adventured 9y ago
      For a small nation, it's one of the few outsized competitive advantages they can try to offer (that is, something they can do that can benefit them far beyond the scale of their population). Ireland's corporate tax rate + joining the European single market, resulted in one of the greatest booms in modern economic history. From $40 to $280 billion in GDP in just 17 years. Given the extreme nature of the benefits, a small nation is probably crazy not to do it.
      - Boothroid 9y ago
        Is that inflation adjusted?
  - barrkel 9y ago
    France has a lower effective rate of tax than Ireland's for companies in the CAC40 - 8%. There's a lot of hypocrisy whirling around about tax. The larger a company is, the lower tax it pays in France owing to various breaks and deals. A bunch of this criticism is just another way of saying France First.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > Why do you assume no one is? Because they're picketing Apple and not the National Assembly?
  - Voloskaya 9y ago
    As far as I know, the French national assembly doesn't make the law in Ireland, so I fail to see the point.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    Would you be discussing the occupation of the National assembly here in HN? Did you the last time?
bauerd 9y ago
Maybe people are mad at their government but more mad at Apple?
- bdibs 9y ago
  More would be accomplished by protesting the government that allows certain loopholes. Apple is a public company with an obligation to its shareholders to make money, not pay erroneous taxes.
  - bauerd 9y ago
    >More would be accomplished by protesting the government that allows certain loopholes. I'm not so sure about this as I'd question that it's possible for a single government to close loopholes on its own. Arguably yes, governments should be pressured into closing "certain loopholes", but not because this necessarily leads to a better outcome. >Apple is a public company with an obligation to its shareholders to make money Not everyone agrees that companies ought to maximise only shareholder value.
    - xiphias 9y ago
      Shareholder value and making money are not the same thing (and the job of the CEO is to maximize shareholder value, not money). I'm a Tesla shareholder, and I would be quite disappointed if the company would stop caring about scaled sustainability and would just stay as a luxury car brand (which would make it easy for Tesla to not lose money on research).
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      > I'm not so sure about this as I'd question that it's possible for a single government to close loopholes on its own. That's the argument against signing global warming treaties, isn't it?
      - bauerd 9y ago
        It's not an argument against closing loopholes.
jules 9y ago
The problem is the EU, not Ireland. France should be able to tax apple on its own.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  France does tax Apple on its own. They still pay VAT of course as well as on any profits classified as French (e.g. retail). The question is then everything else whose origin isn’t obvious.
  - rsj_hn 9y ago
    The issue is using various IP transfer schemes to make it look like their French division has no profits while the Isle of Man division is earning billions.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Technically speaking, almost all of the value is created in the USA via R&D. I don’t think Apple has any significant amount of R&D creation in France (hopefully a lab or two). Then there is some by order manufacturing in China, along with component acquisition, leaving just retail and distribution for local markets. Now, Apple can and has done some dodgy IP transfers to tax havens, but France wouldn’t have been the wronged party in that, the USA would be.
      - realusername 9y ago
        Value is only created when you sell products, not when you create them (and especially not in R&D which is gamble cost for most companies), otherwise all the startups would be rich. If there would be no value creation in France, Apple would not have any business there.
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        Ridiculous, how would that even work? Profit is “sales - expenses.” So how would Apple account for the R&D in the states, or does Apple France just want to tax them assuming all the inputs don’t exist? That’s why Apple USA sells iPhones to Apple France at some price above hardware production costs. It doesn’t make sense any other way. Value isn’t created on sale, it is only realized as money at that point.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
barrkel 9y ago
Ireland is closing its loopholes. Specifically, if a company is managed outside the country but registered in the country, it was considered non-resident for tax purposes. That changed in 2014, with a grandfathered provision that expires in 2020. http://www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3410898/Ireland-Changes-to-Irish-corporate-residence-rules.html http://www.internationaltaxreview.com/Article/3410898/Irelan...

pcurve 9y ago

What's stopping EU from getting their acts together and impose corporate equivalent of Alternative Minimum Tax for companies doing business there?

iamthirsty 9y ago
Uh, money? Seems like an obvious one.
dreta 9y ago
Lobbying.
Voloskaya 9y ago
Because to do that all the EU contries would need to agree. How do you go about convincing Ireland to vote for something like that?
pmyteh 9y ago
The EU doesn't have general legislative competence for tax: it's reserved to the member States. To change this would (IIRC) require a new treaty, and the perceived loss of sovereignty would go down like a lead balloon with many of the governments - so that won't happen at least in the short term.

beloch 9y ago

I really respect this kind of activism. Fair taxation certainly isn't the sexiest topic to hold a protest about, but it is actually a huge fundamental issue for us today. Individuals, and Corporations we treat as legal individuals, produce value for our society in several ways, and paying taxes is one of them. When wealthy individuals or large corporations dodge taxes via off-shore firms, etc. they erode the basis of public services and increase the tax burden on less wealthy individuals and smaller companies. Worse yet, they frequently seem to do this by subverting our public officials. It's reached the point where our regulatory institutions and even our government appear severely compromised by the financial concerns of corporations. If our elected representatives need corporate money just to get elected, how can we rely on them to represent us on issues that might run against the interests of those corporate donors? Direct public action, such as protests, seem to be the last recourse left available to us on certain topics. When you have a large, enormously successful company sitting on gargantuan cash reserves not paying its taxes and getting away with it, you have a problem. Apple probably isn't even the worst offender, but they're famous and have a built in hate-club (anything that inspires fans also inspires anti-fans). While this protest only had a few hundred supporters, that's pretty incredible for this kind of topic. Hopefully this sort of protest happens more often and gives tax-evading corporations pause.

walshemj 9y ago
True but as some one I know said about the 35 hour working "funny how its always the non French companies that got raided"
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Why is it funny that these activists focus on foreign companies selling in France but not paying taxes on those sales? Seems perfectly understandable to me why foreign firms behaving like Apple would be the target.
  - kemiller 9y ago
    The French were primary architects of the EU. It's a bit rich to complain now that Ireland and Apple are taking advantage of its rules.

cdancette 9y ago

While the root of the problem is not the companies' action (they do what is logical for their own benefits), this is very good to raise public awareness. This could be seen as a negative externality, because it has a very negative impact on the economy of the countries they're operating in. They're basically sucking money out of the country without contributing back what they should

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

downandout 9y ago

These people are protesting against the wrong entity. Apple followed the tax laws at the time, so they should protest against their government for creating loopholes that can and always will be exploited by those with the resources to do so. Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, which includes taking advantage of any and all available strategies to reduce their tax burden.

cdancette 9y ago
While you're right, I think it's still a good thing, as apple is obviously on the border of legality (in fact, most of those tax evasion schemes are not proven legal). I read that they estimated that each technique they used had a 1/4 chance of being judged illegal in court. Moreover, it raises awareness, and it is a good thing to blame publicly those society to help governments change the rules. If no one complains, why do anything?
- visarga 9y ago
  You buy an iPhone in France, tax doesn't go to fund the French people, it goes into an offshore. You tell them to stop it, they find another loophole, even more protracted. That's quite upsetting. So, Apple exploits both China and Europe to make a buck.
nraynaud 9y ago
Nope, 1)they don’t have a fiduciary duty to anyone in Europe 2) European doctrine in accounting is not that you can do anything as long as you don’t break the rules, but that you should account in a way that reflect the truth as much as possible within the rules 3) the European doctrine of tax law is that you should tax your profit where they are made 4) your headquarter for European tax purpose is not the address in your letterhead, but where the orders tend to radiate from.
- prepend 9y ago
  They are a US company. Fiduciary duty is per parent company. The complaint isn’t about the French subsidiary not paying taxes, but for parent.

alfithehermutt 9y ago

Respect. Id love to see the alt right and hard/extreme/radical/(or whatever else you are calling)the alt-left to do the same rather then attacking poor citizens.

steinerj 9y ago
wat

PrimalDual 9y ago

Pardon my ignorance but I thought Apple largely obeyed the law. Shouldn’t these people be protesting the government that fails to tax Apple justly?

Joakal 9y ago
> “Apple must stop denying the tax practices highlighted by the European Commission’s investigation, withdraw its appeal to the European Court of Justice and pay its fine of 13 billion euros as quickly as possible,” said Aurélie Trouvé, spokesman for Attac, according to the release. A blurb from article. It looks like the government already went after Apple.
- devereaux 9y ago
  The protesters may not want to let justice run its course.
- icebraining 9y ago
  They sound misinformed. The 13 billion euros is not a fine, it's back taxes that the EU says Apple should have paid to Ireland. Yes, this is relevant; Apple is not being punished¹, they're just being told to fulfill their obligations. ¹I'm not saying they should or shouldn't be.
  - toyg 9y ago
    Potato, potahto. Apple must pay and Ireland must collect, dropping their insulting appeal. Whether it's a fine or backdated taxes is relatively irrelevant at this point.
westiseast 9y ago
Ireland allowed Apple a loophole where they were incorporated there, but non-resident, and therefore no tax. It was a sweetheart deal and Ireland got jobs and investment. The EU said no, wants the back tax to be paid.
- 9y ago

21 9y ago

To those saying that Apple has a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? But on the contrary, Apple highlights in a lot of their presentation how green and environmentally conscious they are, going above and beyond what the laws require: https://www.apple.com/environment/ https://www.apple.com/environment/ Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money than you lose by paying for greener technologies? If people can make avoiding paying taxes seen in the same light, things will change. I wait for the day this page exists: https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/

iiiggglll 9y ago
> I wait for the day this page exists: > https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ Not quite what you mean, but there's this, just posted within the last month: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple-tax-payments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple...
jedmeyers 9y ago
> shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? No, because they believe that showing that they care about the environment more than the laws require will result in increased profits, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
toyg 9y ago
> Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money There is a generational issue as well. Cook (and before him Jobs) grew up in the '70s, when the political upheavals of the '60s had started to rot. The main ideals that survived that age were environmentalism and racial/sexual equality - likely because they could be coupled with aggressive capitalism relatively painlessly. What "big values" do companies like Apple push, today? Environmentalism and racial/sexual equality. Fair taxation is an issue that started to be considered only since the late '90s, and really went mainstream only with Occupy. In the '60s and '70s high taxes were normal (the legacy of New Deal and war effort in US, and socialist movements in Europe); in the '80s and '90s cutting taxes became a mantra, a shortcut to political victory. By the early 2000s the cracks started to show. As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation.

VeronicaJJ123 9y ago

May be France's shitty tax regime is more to blame here. French government should work with Apple to come up with a simplified tax code or show some balls and expel Apple from the country.

jokoon 9y ago

I was talking to a teacher in management who worked with finance, he told me that tax havens will never get solved to this day. Every developed country has its own tax haven. Even if a country manages to ban banks from transferring money to a tax haven, businesses would move to other countries or find other loopholes. It's a race to the bottom. I guess the only thing that would solve the situation is a global agreement against tax havens, something that would require a lot of diplomatic work between countries, so I guess the UN would be involved somehow? I hear so many people ranting about the government increasing their taxes, so often in their anger they sympathize with companies who use tax havens, surprisingly, saying it's the fault of politicians and their whole "gang". I am still waiting for voters to be attentive to this not sexy problem of taxation, and maybe, maybe, if large companies's image suffer from it, maybe things will move... But it would require citizens to at least be aware of the accounting of all of this...

tedeh 9y ago
This is already starting to happen, see for example AEOI: http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinformation.htm http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinfo... I believe governments (some of them, starting in Europe...) may very well be on their way towards harmonised tax levels because there is just so much money they are missing out on and they know it. Ireland may be reaping most of the benefit as it stands right now, but it is probably clear that a slightly higher tax in Ireland and a slightly lower one in other European countries may well net Ireland more in the end anyway. If large megacorporations will be as affected by this general trend as small business owners remains to be seen I guess - I'm not too optimistic about that.
- jokoon 9y ago
  I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I'm doubtful about those initiatives. Tax experts seem to be 10 steps ahead of legislators, not to mention lobbyists. I really want to believe that tax havens could be solved, but if you think about it, it's a very hard problem and nobody has enough political capital to solve it. Even people who are in power have little interest in trying to improve the situation, and I doubt that voters would really give any damn, not to mention that there are many small businesses who already benefit from tax havens too.

oldandtired 9y ago

Taxation, like all things mandated by any government, is regulated by the legislation put in place by the respective governments. Everyone is entitled to use said legislation to minimise their burdens, everyone. The problem that arises is that governments do not manage their responsibilities in these areas (or pretty much every area they have legislative control over) in any adequately honest way. Instead of everyone being treated in the same way (including any entities created by fiat such as companies, etc) equally, we see all governments make special cases for various segments. So we see varying rates of taxes being applied across the population. Within that, what is never brought to account is how that government uses those funds. Many years ago, if I heard it correctly, a new taxation regime was to be brought into a certain country. One of the ideas put forward internally was that a transaction tax be levied against all transactions passed through the banking systems use in that country. From what I gathered, it was something like, 1/100 currency unit per 100 currencies units. The initial estimation (from what was conveyed) was that this would raise enough taxation to be able to remove all other taxation methods (including income taxes, sales taxes, government duties, etc). The richest companies and individuals would (by the nature of their transaction) pay the majority of this. It would also gather tax from all money laundering and criminal activities. The burden on the least able members and small companies, etc would be less than what they were currently paying. From what was conveyed, this specific option was given the death knell due to it being an incredibly hard sell to the country because all major companies and all major welfare groups would come out against this. They settled for something that ended up not being capable of decreasing the basic taxation burden on the general non-business community. The taxation law would have gone from 30,000+ pages down to probably less than 50 pages. So how do you expect any sense to arise in this area?

qengho 9y ago

Taxation is theft.

gohbgl 9y ago
True, funny how it's never "I also want to pay less taxes".
dennis_jeeves 9y ago
Upvoted your comment. Funny how people cannot see the obvious. Not many people would pay taxes - unless threatened with violence.

nattmat 9y ago

Norway's pension fund has also started putting pressure on companies it holds shares in, among them Apple. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-tax/norways-wealth-fund-turns-spotlight-on-company-tax-and-pay-idUSKBN1790UA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-tax/norways-we...

dingo_bat 9y ago

How hard is it to solve the tax problem? France should abolish all income taxes, and put a 100% sales tax on iphone. Problem solved. Apple can dodge as much income taxes as they want.

evgen 9y ago
Then Apple stops selling in France and continues to sell in Belgium, Germany, Spain, etc and people drive them into France by the truckload. Or Amazon just delivers them via post. No taxes to France at all. Problem solved.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  That's ok. I'm sure sales will take a substantial hit if people cannot walk into a store and buy it. I mean there's a reason Apple sells directly in France, right?
  - evgen 9y ago
    Substantial? I doubt it. While Apple does a lot of retail volume, the big money-makers like the iPhone can be drop-shipped from anywhere in the EU. There are 20 Apple stores in France, but millions of iPhones there; I doubt more than 20% of French iPhone users purchased at an Apple store, and probably closer to 5%.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      > Substantial? I doubt it. It must be, otherwise why would Apple even have a retail channel in France? I think the number would be closer to 50%. Keep in mind that iphones are purchased at all sorts of retailers apart from istores.

spodek 9y ago

Helping people install Linux to migrate away from Apple might make their protests more effective.

s3nnyy 9y ago

I think it is pretty normal for mega-corps to do tax-evasion activities, otherwise they would not be mega-corps.

LeeHwang 9y ago

I really respect this. We need to publically shame and boycott companies that hide their money and refuse to pay taxes. The government isn't doing anything, but we can !

hartator 9y ago

Apple pays 20% VAT on all their products. It's hardly notging.