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Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

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Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#131

Post by matwood »

eru wrote: post #13
rdslw wrote: post #4

Good. Read how Tim Cook publicly considers Nobel economist Joeseph Stiglitz as a one who do not know what he (Stiglitz) is talking about. Eye opening. Excerpts from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/wp/2016/08/13/2016... Q: What do you say in response to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz’s comments on Bloomberg [television], where he called Apple’s profit reporting in Ireland a “fraud”? Tim Cooks answer: I did…

Apple paid taxes according to Irish laws. Is it Apple's problem that Irish law disagrees with EC agreements? (Seems to be Ireland's problem.) If people want companies to pay certain taxes, they should vote for politicians that pass laws that require companies to pay those taxes.. In any case, we should be taxing land value. That's harder to avoid: you can't hide land.

> In any case, we should be taxing land value. That's harder to avoid: you can't hide land.

This is already done, and depending on where you live it is quite expensive. It is also in addition to all of the other taxes someone is paying.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#132

Post by tinkerrr »

andmarios wrote: post #42

In 2014 Apple's effective tax rate was 0.005%. That is 5 cents for every $1000 in profits. Even a patent troll could do better than Ireland...

Why this blatant falsification of facts? In 2014, Apple's earnings before interest and taxes was $53,483,000 and the income tax expense was $13,973,000. That's 26.12% effective tax rate. All data from Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL. It's a similar tax rate in other years too.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#134

Post by denis1 »

satysin wrote: post #114

I am not too sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I do think Apple (and many other companies) should pay more taxes. However on the other hand Ireland enticed many big companies to their country on the promise of lower tax. You can't blame Apple for taking advantage of such an offer. They followed the letter of the [Irish] law as far as I can tell (unless someone can correct me?). I think this could end up bei…

That is the entire point of this article though. Apple didn't follow Irish laws (where Irish law = EU laws + laws created by the Irish parliament). They followed a deal with the Irish government that was actually against the Irish law.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#135

Post by creshal »

satysin wrote: post #114

I am not too sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I do think Apple (and many other companies) should pay more taxes. However on the other hand Ireland enticed many big companies to their country on the promise of lower tax. You can't blame Apple for taking advantage of such an offer. They followed the letter of the [Irish] law as far as I can tell (unless someone can correct me?). I think this could end up bei…

> However on the other hand Ireland enticed many big companies to their country on the promise of lower tax. You can't blame Apple for taking advantage of such an offer. They followed the letter of the [Irish] law as far as I can tell (unless someone can correct me?).

There's two separate issues. One, Ireland is cutting taxes far below the EU average to attract all companies they can. That's a dick move, but welcome to politics, it's fully legal. Two, Apple has received further tax breaks on top of that, reducing their tax rate from a crippling, communist 1% to an effective 0.005%. The European Commission found only the second deal to be illegal, and Apple just has to repay the tax difference to the regular Irish levels.

Ireland is still a tax haven, just slightly less unfairly advantageously to Apple.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#136

Post by lorenzhs »

eru wrote: post #34
marcospri wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Pub next door pays a higher effective tax

They sell alcohol after all. But fair point. And because the bigger players who can hire expensive accountants can always mask their profits, we shouldn't tax profits. It's too malleable. Hey, even VAT is a better tax.

VAT is not a fair tax, as it favours the rich at the disadvantage of the poor. It's everyone paying the same rate on basic necessities, independent of their financial situation. Sure the rich buy more stuff and thus pay more VAT, but raising VAT doesn't hurt a rich person. It hurts poor people, though.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#137

Post by blahi »

pjc50 wrote: post #115
onion2k wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it Apple's problem that Irish law disagrees with EC agreements? Yes. To the tune of €13bn. At the scale Apple operates their legal team should be considering whether the deals they negotiate are legal in all the applicable jurisdictions, not just the local one. The Irish government should also have done a better job, so part of the blame lies with them, but that doesn't free Apple of all responsibility. In any cas…

However, the nice thing about land taxation is that hiding the ownership doesn't matter: you can see from the land registry that it's owned by Shady Cayman LLC, but you don't care who they really are so long as you have a corresponding payment to the tax authorities. If they fail to pay that becomes a lien and ultimately reposession.

Isn't land already taxed? I believe it is, so you must be talking about increasing the taxes on land while scrapping the rest. Or even further, probably taxing property (a skyscraper doesn't have too big of a land footprint). A few questions I have about this:

How do you tax companies which rent their office/production space?

Isn't taxing land punishing companies planning for growth? It is not uncommon to buy/rent spaces which you don't need now but you know will be needed in the future?

How do you deal with real estate investors?

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#138

Post by tobltobs »

pulse7 wrote: post #105

Companies try to pay the taxes by the "legal minimum" principle: pay what is required, but not more. If you have 2 parking slots in the downtown next to each other and one of them is cheaper, you will park where is cheaper... Why pay more if not required? Question is: Did politicians, who created such laws, received bribes?

The double irish is more like parking your car on the bicycle lane.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#139

Post by noir-york »

Apple engage(ds) in aggressive tax planning - and they, along with FBK, Google, etc - deserve to be smacked down with a heavy bill.

An effective tax rate of 0.005% - when your next door business neighbour is paying 20% - is morally wrong and damaging to society and the common good.

Re: Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

#140

Post by vixen99 »

denzil_correa wrote: post #66
bapbap wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No fine for Apple. Apple can almost look entirely innocent on this, they asked Ireland to look at how they've structured their tax affairs knowing full well what impact this would have on their tax bill. However Ireland agreed to it, even though it shouldn't have. The EU has now stepped in and clarified that Ireland should not have allowed this in the first place.

Shouldn't Ireland also take the blame here? If not, this sets a dangerous precedent for future governments who can sek companies to set shop but then back out once courts rule against. I mean, Ireland here comes out with no culpability.

Not quite. It's possible they'll feel the effect of the 1,000+ overseas companies with a presence in Ireland reassessing the pros and cons for their being there.
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