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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

#201

Post by barking »

allendoerfer wrote: post #186
barking wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is in the interest of the German economy seems to be what determines EU and ECB actions, whether it's setting interest rates, applying rules or deciding what 'deals' to investigate. The EU, did it go hard after VW? But when it comes to the small fry, rules is rules.

The US, which went hard after VW, is not particularly known for going hard after the environmental footprint of it's domestic brands. Yes, VW cheated, but exposing VW as the sole bad guy considering US gas prices and mileages is quite an impressive trick to pull off.

I don't understand the moral equivalency that you are implying there exists between US gas prices etc and VW providing fabricated statistics. My point is that the EU and Germany failed to uncover this. Also Germany and France have both in the past chosen to ignore the rules of the EU/Euro club without sanction. That it is far easier for the EU regulators to pick on one of the small fry countries and make negative findings is my argument.

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

#202

Post by allendoerfer »

Even with these baby steps, I like to see that the EU is unifying its corporate tax code. Of course, we do not need to worry about Ireland, Great Britain already made sure their position as English entrance to the EU will stay strong regardless of tax-breaks.

The Netherlands are naughty, too, due to a strange coincidence Ikea Germany has to pay fees of exactly its profits to Ikea Netherlands each year. I think the bigger countries should use their power to end this ruthlessly, since in the end also the smaller countries would benefit if the race to the bottom stops.

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

#203

Post by alkonaut »

coldtea wrote: post #192
alkonaut wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agreeme…

Agreed, to me much of the point of the EU is ensuring countries don't undercut eachother on product safety, environmental regulation, tax laws etc. Ideally these things would be regulated in global agreements too, but that's harder to achieve. I'm fine with Apple moving all of their business to China to dodge high taxes in the EU.

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

#204

Post by allendoerfer »

barking wrote: post #201
allendoerfer wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US, which went hard after VW, is not particularly known for going hard after the environmental footprint of it's domestic brands. Yes, VW cheated, but exposing VW as the sole bad guy considering US gas prices and mileages is quite an impressive trick to pull off.

I don't understand the moral equivalency that you are implying there exists between US gas prices etc and VW providing fabricated statistics. My point is that the EU and Germany failed to uncover this. Also Germany and France have both in the past chosen to ignore the rules of the EU/Euro club without sanction. That it is far easier for the EU regulators to pick on one of the small fry countries and make negative fin…

VW cheated, but the bigger moral problem and the underlying topic is not the cheating but the pollution that was hidden by it. And suggesting that VW is polluting more than US brands is just nuts.

Edit: Just wanted to make clear, that of course the cheating should have totally been caught in Europe earlier. The thought that the US is not biased with its domestic brands just made me chuckle.

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

#205

Post by themihai »

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.

"Apple, which with Ireland said it will appeal the decision, paid tax rates on European profits on sales of its iPhone and other devices and services of between just 0.005 percent in 2014 and 1 percent in 2003, the Commission said" .....really 0.005???

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

barking wrote: post #161
dogma1138 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Irish people benefits when subsidies to French, British or German corporations are curbed. Are you serious? Subsidies to German and French corporations were not curbed they were replaced by the ludicrous loans that the Germans and the French give out to the "poorer" and "less industrious" EU member states so they in term can go around and buy German goodies. And when this Ponzi scheme blows up because of a finan…

They forced Ireland to 'take one for the team' and prevent contagion by repaying bad commercial bank loans from overseas banks to the failed Irish banks. In other words they prevented Ireland from doing an Iceland. They hinted that new, shared burden, measures, to be put in place, to cover such eventualities in the future, would be applied retrospectively to Ireland but they weren't. During the bailout term the EU/EC…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by mcphage »

denzil_correa wrote: post #87
sosull wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To whom should a country and its taxpayers be culpable in this situation? What would be the appropriate form of punishment?

WHAT the punishment would be could be a matter of discussion. My point was there SHOULD be some punishment. I can't imagine a case where Ireland walks out of this unscathed.

Their punishment, in this case, is having the EU step in and dictate what their tax laws should be, overriding Ireland's own tax laws.

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

#208

Post by patrickaljord »

creshal wrote: post #135
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…

> Ireland is cutting taxes far below the EU average to attract all companies they can. That's a dick move

Allowing people and their companies to keep more of their money while creating tons of jobs in a high unemployment country. What a dick move indeed. /s

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

#209

Post by kharms »

If you're American, don't celebrate.

The US government came out against this ruling, suggesting that US corporations are disproportionately targeted by the EC tax rulings.

>The commission has initiated investigations into tax rulings that Apple, Starbucks Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. received in separate EU nations. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew has written previously that the investigations appear “to be targeting U.S. companies disproportionately.”

>“There is a possibility that any repayments ordered by the Commission will be considered foreign income taxes that are creditable against U.S. taxes owed by the companies in the United States,” the paper said. “If so, the companies’ U.S. tax liability would be reduced dollar for dollar by these recoveries when their offshore earnings are repatriated or treated as repatriated as part of possible U.S. tax reform.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-24/u-s-treasu...

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

#210

Post by Radim »

legulere wrote: post #78
beilabs wrote: post #31

6% of total Irish national debt... I wonder how much Irelands payroll taxes would have been were the corporations not to have set up shop in Ireland, they would have just gone somewhere with a decent tax arrangement. Unemployment in the 70's and 80's was brutal in Ireland, personally, I think the government at the time made the right choice, however, this "selective treatment" allowed Apple to pay tax rate of 1% on E…

> I wonder how much Irelands payroll taxes would have been were the corporations not to have set up shop in Ireland, they would have just gone somewhere with a decent tax arrangement. A better question is where the world would be if nation states wouldn't allow multinational companies to pay only negligible taxes by taking part in a race to the bottom. With tax deals like this one you're just ripping other countries…

Even better question is, where the world would be if evolution wouldn't allow individual organisms to optimize their fitness by taking part in a race to the bottom?

That constant pressure to do more with less... deadly.

With "beneficial" (sic) mutations like this one you're just ripping other organisms off.

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