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

rte.ie

211–220 of 436 posts

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

#211

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…

Yeah it wasn't pretty. Ireland was not allowed to default on its loans which was what they should have done.

It did not control its currency or banks which are effectively controlled by the ECB.

It could not repay some or all of its loans with its own currency by simply printing more of it and the only way of getting more currency was taking on more loans.

What people also don't understand is that the laws preventing incentives aren't protecting the weak they are protecting the strong.

Germany can set its corporate tax rate at 40-50% and while people would bitch and moan it would do nothing. It's a huge market, it has a huge and highly developed workforce and it's one of the most industrialized nations on the planet with a highly developed and diverse industry.

It doesn't need incentives to lure corporations to set up shop and it doesn't need incentives to grow its own indigenous corporations and businesses.

If everything would be equal as far as cost of setting shop, employment and taxation between Germany and Ireland. Neither Apple not anyone else would give 2 cents about Ireland when they have countries like Germany available to them.

Many of these laws aren't protecting the smaller nations they are restricting them and preventing them from being competitive forcing them to be effectively dependent on the bigger nations for loans/credit which they give out to allow their industry to keep producing in excess.

Anyone who thinks that Germany loaning money to Ireland so they can go around and buy Volkswagen and BMWs isn't a subsidy are blind or clueless.

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

#212

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…

If the US government makes all Chinese business pay $50 in tax per item but does not impose this demand on domestic businesses, are they giving aid?

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

#214

"...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.

Beats me. We might have to wait 20-30 years for somebody's memoirs to be written to finally hear the rest of it. With this much at stake I seriously doubt there will be a simple narrative.

What I am sure of is that anytime the company with the biggest market cap takes a hit like this? Ten thousand other companies are paying very close attention. Even if Apple took a gamble and lost, other folks have to ask themselves when it comes to regulatory issues in the EU, what kinds of gambles they are taking without even knowing it.

Of course, I simplified the story to make my general point. In the version with more details, Ireland even had their own investigation and worked everything out with Apple. But the EC decided that wasn't good enough.

It's really quite breathtaking. They had to pay 11 years of taxes. How many companies would be able to do that?

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

#215

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…

As a European, I don't have the feeling that contagion (of any kind) was contained (at any level). So it didn't work and no, I won't take your word for "if we didn't had done XYZ it would be a lot worst"... It's already as bad as it gets.

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

#216
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is Apple's problem and no, Apple is not a victim in this thing. The EU treaty is Irish law as well and lawyers from all over the union (myself included) have been looking on at this blatant violation of EU rules for years wondering how long multinational companies would be able to keep the schemes alive. The Irish people have voted for politicians who adopted the EU treaty which bans subsidies to large corpor…

The issue is not that Apple did not pay tax, nor is it Ireland giving Apple a good deal. Ireland charged tax based on reported earnings in Ireland, not world wide, for a child company of Apple that says it is based in Ireland but has revenue income from around the world. The EU has decided that all revenue income for that company should be charged in Ireland, although the US say they have also paid tax in the US. Fun…

> Ireland makes a loot of money from exports to Europe

That's the crux of the overall matter, from a political point of view. Ireland benefits from the European market disproportionately more than the EU benefits from Ireland. This is why Ireland ends up being "a scapegoat" - because nobody is particularly happy about their status as the onshore tax-haven of choice for healthy US multinationals, so every time they end in a pickle, they have very few friends (and with Brexit, they effectively lost their biggest one).

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

#217
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…

I am an Apple shareholder. I pay my taxes on capital gains and dividends from AAPL. That's enough tax. Everyone else can STFU TYVM.

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

#218
post #209

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 inves…

That's fine - sounds like an incentive for companies to bring money back to the US.

The reduction in tax liability happens when the earnings are repatriated per this quote. If these companies are storing this cash overseas in a bid to avoid paying taxes on it with no intention of repatriation until a tax holiday then why should we care?

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

#219
US corporate profits as a percent of GDP are near their all-time highs. Take a look at this historical plot:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=6ThF

I wonder how much of that is due to tax avoidance, whether legal or "unexpectedly illegal" (as in Apple's case).

If governments around the world follow the lead of the EC, I would expect a noticeable decline in corporate profitability over the next five to 10 years.

Note: I just generated the plot above as a png at the St. Louis Fed's FRED website, and I don't know how long the image will remain available. To recreate it, plot the "Corporate Profits, Adjusted" series divided by the "Gross Domestic Product" series, using the same units for both series (e.g., nominal billions).

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

#220

"...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.

Close. They did something that WAS good and perfectly legal. It was a perfectly valid agreement between consenting adults. Then other countries got jealous and intervened. These are the types of attitudes that are fueling the current separatist movement.
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