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

371–380 of 436 posts

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

#371

Post by johnnyhillbilly »

Here's how to fix this:

1. Foreign deductions are taxed based on the difference between the locale where the earnings are made and the locale the service/product is provided from. Where the sales division is located has no relevance to taxability, and deductions for sales costs are treated as any other internal service.

2. IP is enforced on the national level, and should not be eligible as a foreign deduction. Good-will also follows the local market.

3. Documentation should be provided that foreign costs are real, and that they are actually taxed. Tax agreements should be null and void if systematic abuse is uncovered.

The problem right now is that no company can compete against these cheats.

Personally, I think Ireland has scammed the rest of Europe for long enough by now.

Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of India's competitiveness in asses-in-seats outsourcing is created by artificial tax rule phenomena - and various constructs to exploit these.

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

#372

Post by noir-york »

goodbye-w0rld wrote: post #347
noir-york wrote: post #139

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.

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…

It is morally wrong to pay a lower tax rate than your neighbour. If Apple were investing their money into R&D, operations or higher pay checks no one would be complaining. But they're engaging in aggressive tax planning merely to hoard the cash.

> Apple creates more, and better, jobs than the book store they shut down to open a showroom.

It's not about Apple's showroom vs book store. Its about Apple's massive cash pile vs hospital services/fire brigade/police dept/infrastructure etc. Those are essential services, and jobs, too.

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

#373

Post by talideon »

eric_the_read wrote: post #328
talideon wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're speaking Irish, please don't refer to the country as 'Eire' - it's akin to referring to Germany as 'Deutschland' in English. It's either 'Ireland' (the country's name in English) or 'Republic of Ireland' (its official description) if you're more comfortable with that.

I have a bunch of ancient (~1980s) British comics with subscription prices listed as so many £ for UK, so many for Eire.

And that has long stuck in the craw of Irish people. It's seen as a way to subvert the legitimacy of the Irish state here in Ireland when the country is referred to as 'Eire'in English.

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

#374

Post by cmurf »

speleding wrote: post #341
soperj wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the point where Godwin's law comes into effect. Seriously though, it was legal to own slaves in the US not all that long ago, most people now a days wouldn't say "There is no wrong doing here", just because it was legal.

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…

This is like saying the float on currencies should be abolished, which effectively is already done by Euro countries within the EU. They can't each set their own monetary policy independent from the EU, but they have sufficiently different economies if it weren't for having one currency, they'd have float to make up for their differences. So now the EU is trying to take away yet another mechanism by which countries are trying to get some aspects of currency float back. I think if this decision stands, it will put more pressure on the EU. And I don't think that pressure is likely to be relaxed by countries giving the EU more centralized control over monetary policy - most EU countries just aren't up for that.

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

#375

Post by LanceH »

euyyn wrote: post #366
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.

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

And this is an issue between Ireland and the EU.

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

#376

Post by furilo »

wsc981 wrote: post #270
cel1ne wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that. I think most multinationals follow the same double-irish structure [0] which is based on laws in Ireland, the Netherland and the Bermudas. According to Wikipedia (just listing the IT-companies): * Adobe Systems * Apple Inc. * Facebook * Google * IBM * Microsoft * Oracle Corp. * Yahoo! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Also bands like U2 make use of such structures to avoid taxes: http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21625444-...

At least they are Irish...

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

#378

Post by nodamage »

shaqbert wrote: post #118

What Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and most other big US company do is the so called "double Irish"[1]. Essentially is a clever way of using two quirks of some EU countries loopholes in tax laws, from treating IP licensing fees (of course the brand and intellectual IP is owned by a British virgin island tax haven, where else could this stuff be created/invented), and the net result is that Apple et al end up payi…

I posted this in the other thread on the subject but it's worth repeating here: Apple does not actually have any subsidiaries in the British Virgin Islands (or any other Caribbean island), and (despite common belief) it has not actually moved its intellectual property offshore.

Apple's international tax structure was thoroughly documented when they were called up to testify before the Senate, which you can read about in the Senate Subcommittee Memo on Offshore Profit Shifting and Apple[1], and while they do have several Irish subsidiaries, they do not have any subsidiaries in the Caribbean or move any money into the Caribbean.

This is further reinforced in Apple's testimony before the Senate[2]:

> Apple does not move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the US in order to avoid US tax; it does not use revolving loans from foreign subsidiaries to fund its domestic operations; it does not hold money on a Caribbean island; and it does not have a bank account in the Cayman Islands. Apple has substantial foreign cash because it sells the majority of its products outside the US. International operations accounted for 61% of Apple’s revenue last year and two-thirds of its revenue last quarter. These foreign earnings are taxed in the jurisdiction where they are earned (“foreign, post-tax income”).

[1] http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=CDE3652B-DA4E-4EE1-...

[2] https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/Apple_Testimony_to_PSI.pdf

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

#379

Post by nedwin »

premium-concern wrote: post #339
snuxoll wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like individual income tax for expats corporations only pay the difference between their foreign tax liability when moving funds to their US-based sister or parent companies, last I checked.

Which would be a shit-ton of money with their current tax "avoidance" schemes.

Which is why it exists - to reduce tax avoidance by holing up in tax-friendly jurisdictions away from Uncle Sam.

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

#380

Post by cybernytrix »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #348
shaqbert wrote: post #118

What Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and most other big US company do is the so called "double Irish"[1]. Essentially is a clever way of using two quirks of some EU countries loopholes in tax laws, from treating IP licensing fees (of course the brand and intellectual IP is owned by a British virgin island tax haven, where else could this stuff be created/invented), and the net result is that Apple et al end up payi…

> 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…

Ethical to whom?

For all the Apple stockholders, it is ethical to follow the rule and reduce taxes. For all the handme-something EU bums it is not.

Post reply on HN