What Tim Cook should do is ask why the EU government decided to apply their 'understanding' of a tax rule a full 25 years after the activity started. It's perf

What Tim Cook should do is ask why the EU government decided to apply their 'understanding' of a tax rule a full 25 years after the activity started. It's perfectly reasonable for the EU to say to Ireland 'you can't do that, it's stretching the rules' - but it's entirely unreasonable for the EU to change their minds willy nilly and submit to populist pressure and de-facto re-interpret the rules of business as they go along - and then apply them 25 years retroactively. Especially when the very head of the EU, Jean Claude Junker is literally the guy who invented the tax-avoidance schemes for an entire nation - Luxembourg - while he was there. The episode is rotten and stinks to high heaven. The EU should focus more on harmonizing and clarifying their tax rules instead of deciding after the fact who they don't like - and more importantly - should be focused on developing competitive players in tech so they don't have to try to get into penalization wars. Asia is undergoing massive growth, as is S. America, the US is doing really well, while the EU is kind of in a slump. The loopholes should not have ever existed, but it's the EU's/ Ireland's job to make sure they don't exist, not Apple's. Also - this is just the tip of the iceberg on this issue. Finally, the EU wants to call Cook to the table not because it will provide any light on what's going on, rather, they want to try to make a public spectacle of it, i.e. 'Look Europe, we are taking those bad US companies to task' - it's all cynical optics. Better to get their own house in order, Apple et. al. will follow whatever rules are on the table, just make them fair and clear.