Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by jandrese » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #350

abduhl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would very much care if I were Apple and going to be taxed a second time trying to bring my money back to the USA. If that silly rule was eliminated much of all of this would be moot.

They only get taxed on the difference. It's not really a second tax, it's just bringing the tax rate back up to non tax haven levels.

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

#392

Post by jandrese » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

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…

Because it means the ethical company that pays its taxes has to pay for a disproportionate share of the roads, parks, schools, etc... The unethical company gets a competitive advantage in ditching their obligations to the country like a deadbeat dad.

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

#393

Post by nodamage » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

shaqbert wrote: post #148

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…

How to counter this: Just regulated the transfer of IP rights. If you sell say a patent portfolio for $50m to your British Virgin Island subsidiary, and then make $20bn in profits in the decade thereafter on that BVI sub, it appears the IP transfer was waaaaay below market value. And should retroactively be taxed in the US where we engineers had developed that stuff in the first place. Problem solved. US tax base res…

In this particular case, Apple hasn't actually transferred its IP rights offshore, so this wouldn't actually change anything.

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

#394

Post by euyyn » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #375

euyyn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that's what this announcement is about. The Commission is telling Ireland what it did was illegal, and has to fix it.

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

#395

Post by jandrese » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

cowls wrote: post #175

tinkerrr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why this blatant falsification of facts? In 2014, Apple's earnings before interest and taxes was $53,483,000 and the income tax expense was $13,973,000. That's 26.12% effective tax rate. All data from Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL . It's a similar tax rate in other years too.

This article is regarding Apple's EU profits, the Yahoo statement (I think?) is global profits. Also the income statement says: All numbers in thousands So you need to add 000 to the end of those numbers

It seems silly to price in thousands when you're talking about billions. Either go all the way and show billions, or show dollars. Don't try to do some halfassed compromise.

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

#396

Post by euyyn » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #367

doctorpangloss wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The spirit of said tax law.

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

#397

Post by everydaypanos » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

I live in Europe and I can certainly see how this seems like a mess and how can a company obey the laws in one country and at the same time being illegal...

I just want to point out something that is often neglected. EU Commission is basically a referee entity. It all starts with someone making a formal complaint about Apple or Google or Amazon and then they check into it. And in MOST cases the complainers are other US companies that feel that their complaints are being neglected in their own country(ex Yelp)

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

#398

Post by Armisael16 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

throw2016 wrote: post #387

I don't see why commentators here are so divided, presuming they are not beneficiaries of this system. The government gets revenue from taxes to provide services. If everyone were to do what Ireland is doing then goverments either have to raise money by increasing other taxes or reducing services. Either way individuals and society lose. Nobody wins from this race to the bottom. The bigger question is the presence of…

This feels an awful lot like a scam; Apple is explicitly told by the Irish government (the presumable authority on Irish taxes) that what they're doing is fine, then over a decade later the EU steps in and says "you can't do that. pay more taxes retroactively (to us)".

This stinks of ex post facto lawmaking in order to get money from a corporation, and it seems there are a few of us who object to that. I'm all for changing the laws in the present, but I consider ex post facto laws a far worse solution than the disease.

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

#399

Post by twblalock » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 9:57 PM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #396

twblalock wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The spirit of said tax law.

It's not possible to determine the spirit of the tax law an objective way: the tax law is actually an accretion of a bunch of laws and amendments, passed decades apart by different people with different intentions, who were influenced by the politics of their time, lobbyists, the state of the economy, the upcoming presidential election, etc.

For example, some parts of tax law were passed by politicians who wanted to help corporations avoid paying taxes, and other parts were passed by politicians who wanted corporations to stop avoiding taxes. Both of these contradictory intentions are embodied in our current tax law. The spirit of the law is confused at best.

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

#400

Post by toyg » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 10:30 PM UTC

talideon wrote: post #325

riffraff wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Believe this is not just yoit standard double Irish, there was an extra loophole that Eire closed in 2014 where the second company could be based in no country at all, not just a fiscal haven

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.

But, but... Isn't the modern norm to use "native" names wherever possible? Calcutta/Kolkhata, Peking/Beijing and so on? As a token of respect towards actual indigenous cultures.