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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

#361

Post by cmdrfred »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #355
speleding wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only relationship between slavery and corporate profit tax is that both should be abolished. There are hundreds of different ways to tax. Taxing corporate profit is controversial because it's very hard to determine what exactly constitutes profit and for multinational firms like Apple deciding in what jurisdiction profit occurs is highly arbitrary (your iPhone has parts from half a dozen countries). The most logi…

I agree with you to an extent, but I've often heard the argument that in that case wealthy individuals would just place all of their finances in a corporation and never have to pay any taxes whatsoever. How would you address this?

Or when the corporation buys a luxury car and the CEO leases it to himself for $1/year (this is a very common tax avoidance tactic, as the car is for "an employee" they call that lamborghini murcielago a business expense). There are too many loopholes to fix in my opinion. Why tax earnings as opposed to assets anyway?

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

#362

Post by krona »

criddell wrote: post #280
krona wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound legally straight forward, but I can't see how this constitutes state-aid; the double-Irish and dutch-sandwich were/are completely legal tax-avoidance schemes, for instance. Apple isn't headquartered in Ireland, Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe are. The EU says these subsidiaries have been making untaxed profits, but it's not obvious that they've made any profits, ever (that's th…

> the double-Irish and dutch-sandwich were/are completely legal tax-avoidance schemes, for instance Are they completely legal or is this just a case of they are legal, until a court finds that they actually aren't legal. Even if they are legal, I would argue that convoluted schemes to avoid paying taxes is unethical in the same way that moving manufacturing to a place with lax environmental or labor laws in unethical…

> Are they completely legal or is this just a case of they are legal, until a court finds that they actually aren't legal.

To the extent that things are generally legal until they aren't.

The complaints from the US treasury are that the decision goes against pre-existing case law, and so shouldn't be applied retroactively. [1]

A 'power grab' is an adequate description of what's going on; the EU commission is basically forcing member states to redefine their own arm's length principle and their application of it. They would call it 'tax harmonization.'

1] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties...

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

#363

Post by pravda »

goodbye-w0rld wrote: post #357
goodbye-w0rld wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it morally wrong to pay fewer taxes than your neighbor? Apple's job is to enrich their shareholders. They have no second allegiance to country or continent. It's morally wrong for them to pay taxes into a bureaucratic system instead of investing in R&D, operations, and shareholder returns. Fair societies don't mean equal societies. Apple creates more, and better, jobs than the book store they shut down to open…

There is nothing in the world that makes me more mad than a bunch of bureaucrats, that have produced nothing for anyone, demanding resources from the employees of Apple, who are working to create products that consumers want in exchange for wealth. This is a direct assault on all employees of Apple and the work that they do with the understanding that they will be able to retire comfortably. Unbelievable greed on the…

>demanding resources from the employees of Apple

They are doing nothing of the sort. They are demanding 'resources' (money) from the shareholders. So please, don't be mad.

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

#364

Post by [deleted] »

zigzigzag wrote: post #335
Xixi wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corporation tax rate in Ireland is 12.5%, and the rate applied to Apple was (eventually) 0.005%: it's the delta between Irish own tax rate and the one applied to Apple that is deemed illegal according to this EU ruling. If Ireland want a 0% tax rate for all corporations, as far as I know they are allowed to do it. They just cannot afford it.

That's the EU's interpretation of the figures, but that's assuming Ireland should have taxed all revenue across all of Europe. The Irish tax system doesn't work that way though and the Irish government is stating flat out that there were no special deals: the apparently "low" rate is because the EU isn't calculating taxable income the same way Ireland does.

[deleted]

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

#365

Post by euyyn »

zepto wrote: post #334
shaqbert wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.

No, they don't go scot free. If and when they repatriate the money, they will pay the tax. Just because they have chosen not to do that yet, doesn't change anything about the liability.

"Yet". Why would they do it ever?

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

#366

Post by euyyn »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #353
doctorpangloss wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the result of expert lobbying. You don't need expert lobbying. Look at this forum, full of tax-evasion apologists who conflate pragmatism with pedantry. Pedantry is the one of the most intellectually and emotionally bankrupt moral frameworks. It basically states that if you just think about the rules a lot, then you will find the solution. I mean, obviously all these politicians and normal people, they've just been…

What exactly are the point of rules if you can reinterpret them in your favor as you see fit? It would be perfectly reasonable to rewrite rules going forward, but to retroactively change what the law says invalidates the point of having laws to begin with.

The EU rules about what state aids are legal or not have been there for years, though.

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

#367

Post by twblalock »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #356
haneefmubarak wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are the point of rules if you can reinterpret them in your favor as you see fit? It would be perfectly reasonable to rewrite rules going forward, but to retroactively change what the law says invalidates the point of having laws to begin with.

I don't know, what's the point of rules if they're not enforced properly? Or if they're written by people you don't like? Or any number of problems? I'm assailing this line of thinking in general. Instead, can we discuss whether or not giant corporations avoiding taxes is ethical, rather than whether or not there's something up with the rules? Do you seriously believe that what Apple and other large corporations do w…

What ethical standard is there that can determine how much tax a person or corporation should pay, apart from tax law?

It's not like there are pre-existing moral rules in the case of taxes -- taxes exist only because of tax law; tax law defines what taxes are, who is to pay them, and how much they ought to pay. Tax law is the only authoritative standard to which someone's behavior re: taxes can be submitted.

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

#368

Post by riskable »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #355
speleding wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only relationship between slavery and corporate profit tax is that both should be abolished. There are hundreds of different ways to tax. Taxing corporate profit is controversial because it's very hard to determine what exactly constitutes profit and for multinational firms like Apple deciding in what jurisdiction profit occurs is highly arbitrary (your iPhone has parts from half a dozen countries). The most logi…

I agree with you to an extent, but I've often heard the argument that in that case wealthy individuals would just place all of their finances in a corporation and never have to pay any taxes whatsoever. How would you address this?

This one is easy and points out another problem: The ability of businesses to write off expenses.

The cost of goods inside airports would be significantly lower if business travelers couldn't just expense everything they buy. As long as it's max 1/3rd of the usual food allowance businesses can charge that amount and be assured that business travelers will pay.

If you take away corporate taxes then "expensing" will go away entirely. Along with all those receipts you have to save and the entire industries and businesses that profit from it (e.g. fake receipt producers, Concur, etc).

Wealthy individuals wouldn't be able to expense their purchases through subsidiary corporations anymore which would necessitate collection via sales tax. If you think that's an awful lot like the Fair Tax system you're not far off.

I'm actually not an advocate of the Fair Tax or even a Federal-level sales tax because it would be very regressive: Vastly unfair to the bottom 50% of society. Having said that, if you abolish corporate taxes it's one of the only ways to obtain tax revenue.

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

#369

Post by patrickaljord »

creshal wrote: post #240
patrickaljord wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They hired 6,000 people across Ireland.

http://www.apple.com/ie/customer-letter/

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

#370

Post by cmurf »

X86BSD wrote: post #327
shaqbert wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.

Every time this apple in Ireland tax issue comes up it makes my brain hurt, literally hurt to read all these replies who don't seem to look at this problem correctly. First, Apple did nothing illegal. There is no wrong doing here. They pay tax in every country they owe tax. Period. Second, perhaps it's not Apple that's the problem? Perhaps it's the tax that is the problem. If you have mega corps building entities out…

Ha, well if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Whether Apple did something illegal isn't really what people are bringing up, but whether Ireland and Apple agreed to a loophole no one at the EU level actually intended. It'd sorta be like Apple getting out of paying U.S. federal tax because of a California loophole that disproportionately applies to Apple.

I don't see the EU giving Microsoft grief. It'd seem they're paying EU taxes differently than Apple.

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