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

rte.ie

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

#191

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.

Morals are irrelevant in this story. Tax law is a system of rules. There should be no second arbitrary standard people (and companies) should be expected to follow.

>Morals are irrelevant in this story.

ah, the capitalist angle. unfortunately, the consequences of acting this way are poor for the rest of society.

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Questions: 1. how far is this from extortion? As you put it, it doesn't sound like extortion at all. It sounds like a business negotiation. Like negotiating for a place you want to rent or whatever. If they don't accept your terms, you take your business elsewhere. Extortion necessitates an actual threat of harm. "I'll take my business elsewhere" is not that, since Apple's business wasn't Ireland's in the first pla…

The laws are designed to make the extortion impossible. If one state isn't allowed to undercut another for an individual company then the "or we'll take our business elsewhere" question isn't possible.

>The laws are designed to make the extortion impossible. If one state isbn't allowed to undercut another for an individual company then the "or we'll take our business elsewhere" question isn't possible.

Those are EU laws. Apple could have taken their business anywhere else, including outside EU where such laws don't apply, and a country could undercut Irish taxes.

That said, I'm not against an international agreement to prevent that (though I don't think most countries will be willing to sign it, as they lose their negotiating advantages compared to other countries, and no companies would prefer them all other things being equal).

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

#193
post #13
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.

That would be the case if Apple only used those tax cuts to do business inside Ireland.

But Apple used those cuts, sold products all over EU and then tried to pay (or actually not pay) their due taxes to all those EU countries where it did business back in Ireland.

Apple was not trying to use the Irish law, Apple was trying to use a loophole in EU that didn't actually existed and got caught.

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

#194

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.

Morals are irrelevant in this story. Tax law is a system of rules. There should be no second arbitrary standard people (and companies) should be expected to follow.

Ah yes, because laws are totally independent of morals. I'm clearly being facetious. Laws are the manifestation of morals, either collective or of highly influential individuals.

But, to your point, laws are the non-arbitrary manifestation of those morals. Indeed there should be no unwritten standard as well. In this case, there wasn't: the Irish laws did not comply with EU law, and EU law take precedence in this matter. Apple should have known that was a possibility, and probably did know but hoped (and lobbied) for the best.

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

#195

"...The findings are a result of the culmination of a three-year investigation by Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager into tax arrangements for Apple, dating back 25 years..." I have no love in my heart for Apple. At the same time, it's not like they don't have enough lawyers. So I have to assume that anything involving billions of dollars would be strenuously vetted. I might be wrong, but I'm starting from t…

I'm not convinced that even if Apple have the money and probably employ some of the best tax lawyers around. That they always go for the solution that is unambiguous above board and guaranteed to follow the law. This might be one of the times they went for something that looked good and they thought they could get away with, but that didn't pan out in the end.

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

#196
post #119

Given the stakes, unclear to me why multinationals don't find a way to create there own country, that would be free of any non-member decent.

And then where they would see their products, if not by having to pay taxes in the countries where they would ship those products from their own tax free country?

I don't think you get the issue here, a company in the USA can't just come to EU and sell their products without paying taxes... much less a company from a non existing wannabe country.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh they were. it's actually quite clear: if you exempt some corp from taxes you are paying them the exempted sum compared to another business not receiving the exemption. In my opinion it is highly unethical to construct such financial mechanisms with the only aim to reduce tax payments.

Not taxing someone is not the same as paying them! By that logic I am paid by the government every time I listen to Simply Red without them taxing me for the privilege? Why am I not rich then? Damn me, the linguistic backflips in this thread are amazing. Tax is the taking of something . Low taxes mean you take less , not that you are generously paying people!

When writing laws, it's best if they can't be circumvented by obvious semantic games. That's why our judges are humans, and not computers—if someone is trying to jump through a semantic loophole, having judges decide the case can prevent that.

In this case in particular, describing the financial benefit as "lower taxes" instead of "giving money", when "giving money" is illegal, probably isn't a loophole that should be allowed, when the result is the same.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not taxing someone is not the same as paying them! That is a terrible straw-man - no one ever claimed that in this thread. Additionally - your argument relies on word play: in practise, Walmart giving you a $10 bill after you buy a $100 item has the same effect as giving you a $10 discount on the item. When one corp (Apple) pays less taxes than others in the same jurisdiction (Ireland in this case), it is unfair -…

It's not a straw man: the EU itself is claiming it - that's what the entire thread is about. If the EU isn't claiming that low taxes are "state aid" then why are they using state aid rules to try and enforce a tax rise? in practise, Walmart giving you a $10 bill after you buy a $100 item has the same effect as giving you a $10 discount on the item I guess you meant a $90 discount? But regardless, the wordplay is on y…

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

#199
It seems a lot of people think this ruling has something to do with 1) the "double irish" which is doees not or 2) Irelands 12.5% corporate tax, which it doesnt either.

The ruling, as far as the EU are concerned, is that Ireland gave Apple a deal more beneficial than anyone else. But the basis for this claim is how the tax was charged. Instead of charging Irish tax for all income for the company, they charged what was reported in Ireland. The issue that needs to be resolved is did they pay tax anywhere else on the remaining profits. The US said they did but the EU say they dont think so.

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

#200
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well understood that retroactive changes to the law are one of the worst things a legal system can do, which is why so many constitutions ban it and why other countries (like the UK) have a strong convention not to do it. The US Constitution bans them explicitly. Yes, of course countries routinely do bad things and ignore convention and constitutional principles, but that doesn't make it suddenly OK. The low ra…

You have missed the point - this is about different companies within one state being charged different rates of corporation tax, not different states across the EU charging different rates of tax. > if the EU successfully forces countries to pick a single corporation tax rate across the bloc The EU is forcing no such thing. It is forcing countries within the bloc to not give any one company special treatment. The dis…

In-reply-to: ZigZigZag: Once again, it comes down to a question of fairness; you describe Apple's tax deal as if it is a conventional part of fiscal policy where clearly it cannot be treated as such (indeed, if it were, and such tax deals were cut fairly across all corporations in this sector, Ireland would have quite some budgetary problems).

The argument is that the deal that Apple brokered would not have been available to any other company.

A country regulating an industry's tax across the whole industry, affecting every player equally, is very different to a sweetheart deal with one company that puts other players in that same market, both at home and abroad, at a grave disadvantage.

The modern EU is based on freedom of access to market and equality of opportunity. This is what is enshrined in the treaty currently enforced. The EU is not forcing "its members to give up tax policy", it is forcing its members to treat companies fairly across the bloc according to those policies which they have each set. Whilst this could be seen as an assault on their sovereignty, for a collective union to work there has to be common rules, and everyone has to play by them; thereby fairness is ensured. Everybody concedes an equal amount of their sovereignty for the common good (c.f. the ECJ). When one country doesn't play by the rules for its own gain, the others are disadvantaged, and so it is only fair that the central body of that union enforces the previously-agreed rules.

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