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Seems wrong that Ireland cheated the system to attract tech companies then also gets a huge payout.
by InsomniacL 2y ago
Seems wrong that Ireland cheated the system to attract tech companies then also gets a huge payout.
- csomar 2y agoThe idea was that these big companies will move back to the big centers (Paris/Frankfurt) once they have to pay the same taxes. That didn't happen (surprise) and Ireland is now ending up with a tax deluge and high value tech companies.
- quonn 2y agoThe idea was that these big companies and the Irish government obey the law.
- fullspectrumdev 2y agoWhat’s interesting is the deal Apple got was fine under Irish law at the time. Nobody foresaw how things would pan out literally decades later.
- izacus 2y agoIrish law yes, EU law no. It's like saying that you couldn't forsee a state law overriding a lower level region/county law.
- piltdownman 2y agoThat's not how the EU works. To give just one major example, our constitution regularly overrules EU law - Ireland has to go to referendum for Treaties - e.g. The Lisbon Treaty.
- quonn 2y agoEU law has precedence, period.
- piltdownman 2y agoNo, no it doesn't. The primacy of EU law is completely negated in a number of fairly basic instances - the common market first and foremost. Specifically for Ireland, we are the only EU member state that are obliged to hold public referendums on Treaties. Ratification of the Treaty in all other member states is decided upon by the states' national parliaments. Ireland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg also have veto powers when it comes to EU wide regulations. That's why Article 116 exists. You don't know what you're talking about.
- izacus 2y agoYour interpretation just lost in court, so who here doesn't know what they're talking about?
- piltdownman 2y agoIt's literally enshrined in German Case Law as 'Identitätsvorbehalt'. The Polish constitutional court OUTRIGHT ruled that EU law does not supercede national law. Thus, primacy of EU law is wholly rejected in Poland. https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/07/polish-court-rules-some-eu-laws-clash-with-country-s-constitution https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/07/polish-court-rules-some-... I could go on, but responding to Dunning-Kruger commentary is a Pyrrhic battle at best.
- izacus 2y agoWhy are you talking about Poland in Irish case now? :) A case which questions the ability of EU to override Polish consistution. Did you establish that corporate tax law is a consistutional issue? And note that the decision the tribunal has made that redress for differences between EU law and Polish law will have to be handled by: leaving EU, changing the constitution or changing the EU law. I'm not sure Poland wants to push that.
- izacus 2y agoThere are whole parts of EU law that always precede local law without the need for local harmonization. At least read up on basics of how EU works if you're going to debate law.
- quonn 2y ago> literally decades later. So given the time value of money, Apple still has an unfair advantage?
- Nemo_bis 2y agoActually Apple is supposed to pay interest as well, but it's probably going to be a very low "legal interest rate". From the original decision: ---- 1. Ireland shall recover the aid referred to in Article 1(1) from Apple Sales International. 2. Ireland shall recover the aid referred to in Article 1(2) from Apple Operations Europe. 3. The sums to be recovered shall bear interest from the date on which they were put at the disposal of the beneficiaries until their actual recovery. 4. The interest shall be calculated on a compound basis in accordance with Chapter V of Regulation (EC) No 794/2004. ---- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec/2017/1283/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec/2017/1283/oj Linked in https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-09/cp240133en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...
- piltdownman 2y agoAll tax treaties and agreements between countries (including intra-EU) are bilateral country to country agreements. Most are refreshed every 3-7 years based on OECD (or EU) recommended standards. Ireland's laws and treatment are 100% compliant. Rather than competing and reducing their tax rates countries like France prefer to moan, as politically they can’t be seen to favour big bad businesses. This of course was no problem with the EEC where Germany, France and the other ex-colonial powers made out like bandits selling their coal and steel to Ireland and the CT being paid there. Enter an English-language dominated SaaS economy from the 90s and they got caught out as they were more interested in domestic economic protectionism than dealing with the realities of a paradigm shift towards tech. We pivoted completely to an information economy and service based economy from a predominately agrarian one. Now have a look at the tech job market in 2024 in Dublin versus Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Barcelona etc.. If any one of our EU or the other non EU countries were really dissatisfied with Ireland, they have the right to withdraw at any time.
- quonn 2y agoLook, it's nice that Ireland is finally not a poor country anymore. That's primarily due to EU politics and support. It is, however, economically nowhere even close to France or Germany, no matter how large you think the "tech job" market there is [0]. > If any one of our EU or the other non EU countries were really dissatisfied with Ireland, they have the right to withdraw at any time. Who should withdraw from what? [0] For the facts regarding economic strength, read this document by the central bank of Ireland. https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/economic-letters/vol-2021-no-1-is-ireland-really-the-most-prosperous-country-in-europe.pdf https://www.centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/...
- piltdownman 2y agoHow could we be? We're not a post-colonial power like France or Germany who spent years exploiting the African continent in egregious human rights violations. It is literally only since 2021 that we have reached our pre-English Genocide population levels of 1851 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/ireland-population-surpasses-5m-for-first-time-since-1851 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/ireland-popula... Germany has 20x our population, France is not far off it. Neither has anything close to the job market per capita in the IT and Services sector that Ireland has. As for us dragging ourselves up, that has more to with our special relationship with the US. The EU were initially helpful with infrastructural development, access to a Common Market, and to drag us out of the Vatican Law era, but we gave up a huge amount of fishing rights to do so - massively enriching spain, portugal and france who had overfished their own waters. Note also we're not part of Schengen, but maintain a CTA (Common Travel Area) with the UK. Eventually the EU took the legs out from under us in 2008 and forced us at gunpoint to bail out unsecured german bondholders to maintain the integrity of the Euro and prevent a contagion run on German Banks. Irelands FDI sector was highly developed in the late 80s and combined with entities like Enterprise Ireland - ranked first in the world of venture capital investors by deal count in 2020 - hammered home the advantage via our highly-educated English speaking workforce and relatively low cost of living. Even now the number of investments completed by Enterprise Ireland was 42% more than its nearest competitor, French sovereign wealth fund Bpifrance.
- dachworker 2y agoThe law forbids the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges. The law in the EU is written the France and Germany.
- tankenmate 2y ago"The law in the EU is written the France and Germany."; that is an overt oversimplification. Obviously France and Germany have more influence in the EU than other member states, but it is by no means a monopoly.
- Hamuko 2y agoIreland has a pretty big advantage for getting big American companies to settle there since it's the only place in EU where English is the official language. Well, technically Malta also exists, but I imagine that not a lot of companies are looking to set up on a small island the size of Kansas City.
- dachworker 2y agoIt's not just the language. It's also the culture. In fact I would say the culture is even more important. Germans and Americans wouldn't understand each other, even if they spoke the same culture. Their understanding of how life works, their worldview, their expectation of others, ...etc all of these are quite different. For example, a project is ongoing, but in the course of completing the todo list, it is apparent that a certain issue is going to prop up. An American would immediately jump on it, try to fix it and then make sure to boast about it at the next meaning to take the credit. A German would either ignore it completely because it is not part of his responsibilities or bring it up at the next meeting, but not before finishing the todo list as planned even if the last points are rendered obsolete by the emergence of this issue. And when the American starts presenting his solution at the meeting, the German will feel slighted and held out of the loop, and all sorts of confused that this guy acted so independently and out of line, without following procedure. Just an example. There are whole courses about the different corporate cultures and how people find it hard to work in different cultural environments. I am sure the Americans prefer to work with the Irish who although they don't have the same culture, I never heard of major issues in communication between the those two cultures.
- tankenmate 2y agoNot just the culture; Irish law is based on common law, something that Ireland and the US share. Most other EU states use a civil law basis.
- eesmith 2y agoI think you should be cautious about saying "Ireland cheated the system". The onus is placed more directly on the Irish tax authority, and then more broadly the government, and then more broadly the voting population, and only then the entire population. Consider how the ruling says "Ireland had renounced tax revenue, which had given rise to a loss of State resources". This means many people living in Ireland got less government resources than they would have, including people like children and immigrants who did not have the right to vote so cannot be said to have been involved in the cheating, even though they are part of Ireland. Legally speaking it's not a "payout" but "recovery of unlawful state aid."
- InsomniacL 2y ago> This means many people living in Ireland got less government resources than they would have No it doesn't. Ireland did this deal to benefit from it. What they lost from direct tax in one area they gained in others. Had Ireland not made this deal, it's unlikely it would have become the conduit for Apple profits from around the world. The subject of the ruling contains "concerning tax rulings issued by Ireland in favour of Apple" Just because a country has children and immigrants does not absolve it of criticism.
- izacus 2y agoCan you explain where exactly did Ireland gain benefit from not collecting these taxes?
- dylanredm0nd 2y agoThe jobs provided via Apple, FDI in Ireland, Tax paid by apple staff in Ireland... general spend?
- izacus 2y agoThere is just a tiny count employees in Ireland, mostly legal to run the sandwitch.
- oliwarner 2y agoAs Ireland are still saying, this €13bn (plus interest) is going to work against them. It's supposed to work against them, as a chilling effect for any company trying to work EU states against each other for preferential treatment. I'm sure Ireland will argue that they'll offer any multi-billion multinational this sort of treatment, but that's really the point. The EU doesn't want a race to the bottom and if EU-local businesses are unable to leverage this sort of accounting break, it's a massive leg up for external businesses. While this is a large lump, this fine covers a decade of accounts, and this final decision comes 32 quarters after the original fine. Each of those quarters could have paid this off from flat profit. They're doing okay.
- tankenmate 2y agoWhile I largely agree, I don't think there is any fine involved; it is just a requirement for Ireland to collect taxes that the ECJ says Apple should have paid. Hence not a fine.
- oliwarner 2y agoYou're right, of course, but Apple and Ireland won't see it that way ;)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]