Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

rte.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 436 posts

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

#231

Post by omonra »

toyg wrote: post #216
astaunton wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

The word scapegoat implies being blamed for something they are innocent of.

Here Ireland is clearly complicit with Apple in the tax evasion scheme and thus isn't a "scapegoat".

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

#232

Post by barking »

atmosx wrote: post #215
barking wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was at Europe's insistence that bank debts were converted into taxpayers' debts. Ireland didn't do it willingly. Whether or not it resulted in any good for Europe, who knows. One known outcome is that the banks in question were protected from the downside of their commercial decisions and Irish taxpayers will be paying for it for decades to come.

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

#234

Post by khuey »

noir-york wrote: post #166

People here are commenting on Ireland (and other jurisdictions) engaging in tax arbitrage to attract companies and jobs. Competing on tax rates and negotiating tax deals were a huge MNC like Apple pays a ridiculous 0.005% is bad: morally wrong, cuts to public services, increases unjustifiable economic inequality and is just not fair on other much smaller firms who have to pay full whack on the tax. Apple, FBK, etc do…

Companies are already taxed on their profits. The hard question is determining what is a profit and where it is located.

And share buybacks are returning capital to the owners of the business, which is why they invested in it in the first place. The owners can then make their own choices about how to allocate capital productively.

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

#235

Post by legulere »

icebraining wrote: post #74
pfortuny wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the problem is that the EU has a legal structure and if you want to do business in IE then you have to abide by EU's rules. So it is AAPL's lawyers' fault, in the end. Hence, AAPL's. This is another issue why I am strongly against the EU. You can find out that a country is behaving illegally when WRITING ITS OWN LAWS... So you cannot even be sure to be abiding by the law if you obey a country's laws.

You can find out that a country is behaving illegally when WRITING ITS OWN LAWS... So you cannot even be sure to be abiding by the law if you obey a country's laws. That can happen in every country which has a constitution.

And every federal country where you have different bodies that set law.

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

#236

Post by germanier »

ch4ck wrote: post #80
pfortuny wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the problem is that the EU has a legal structure and if you want to do business in IE then you have to abide by EU's rules. So it is AAPL's lawyers' fault, in the end. Hence, AAPL's. This is another issue why I am strongly against the EU. You can find out that a country is behaving illegally when WRITING ITS OWN LAWS... So you cannot even be sure to be abiding by the law if you obey a country's laws.

This is false. EU rules have to be transposed into members states' national law to be binding. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/scoreboard/performance_b...

1) This rule is part of the treaty in which Ireland joined the EU - which was the very first thing added to Irish law.

2) That treaty (which is part of Irish law) allows for certain kind of EU laws (called "regulations") to be directly binding without the Irish lawmakers needing to do something actively. Your link covers another kind of EU laws (called "directives") which in fact have to be transposed before becoming directly enforcecable. However that treaty (which, remember, is part of Irish law) forces the Irish lawmakers to actually transpose them. If they fail they open the country up for litigiation which makes directives indirectly binding.

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

#237

Post by Marazan »

fulldecent wrote: post #220
einarfd wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that was against the laws that one of the parties had signed up to is missing from your statement.

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

#238

Post by madeofpalk »

cryoshon wrote: post #191
madeofpalk wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Change the laws to suit the morals most have.

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

#239

Post by germanier »

zigzigzag wrote: post #177
phab wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree that any such distinction exists though. Governments routinely set taxes and tariffs such that they apply to one industry and not another, or put another way, one set of companies pays lower taxes than others do. The oil industry is famously heavily taxed, that does not imply that hydropower companies are receiving illegal state aid. If a country can't charge different tax rates to different companies base…

EU governments, including the Irish one, are free to set different tax rates for different industries. (They are not free to set tariffs but that is because tariffs are a core EU competency as defined in the treaties.)

Member states are not free to set different tax rates for different companies. This is part of the deal of joining the EU and has been part of the treaties since the beginning. The only surprising thing here is that it took so long for the EC to stop this.

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

#240

Post by creshal »

patrickaljord wrote: post #208
creshal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> people and their companies

Oh? Apple, Google and other US-based multinationals are owned by their European employees?

> creating tons of jobs in a high unemployment country

Less creating, more shifting them from other countries. It benefits Ireland at the expense of the rest of the Union.

Post reply on HN