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Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

marketwatch.com

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Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#131

Post by nojvek »

StudentStuff wrote: post #115
strictnein wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "shame the corporation", I say "caused a lot of retail workers to have a bad day and probably lose some much needed income".

In a country that doesn't treat it workers worse than trash, retail workers don't get screwed out of pay when their employer cancels their shift on the same day due to protests over their abhorrent practices internationally. Here in America, workers are trash as far as our society is concerned. Work harder! Ask for less!

And pay more taxes while the rich get giant cuts

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#133

Post by lordnacho »

downandout wrote: post #70
Thorncorona wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Taking advantage of others (such as lobbying for loopholes) falls under the umbrella. Just because you can dump industrial waste into a river doesn't mean you should. Just because you can steal doesn't mean you should. Just because you can shortchange citizens doesn't mean you should. Yes laws should be passed, I agree, but that doesn't mean we can't also multilaterally a…

So do you voluntarily pay more taxes than you are legally obligated to? Purposely fail to take deductions etc? Hopefully you’re walking the walk since you’re saying things like this.

Do you participate in every tax minimisation scheme you are presented with?

A few years ago a guy came to me with a scheme to reduce my tax. It took him a two-page diagram to show me how it worked. The gist of it was that participants could "work" for a few hours a week on a music project. The work consisted of providing feedback on the music of P Diddy (Puffy/Daddy/etc). Now just to provide some background, I don't know anything about music. I can't play an instrument. I don't have Diddy's cultural background. I don't listen to his music. I'm a financial coder who lives on a different continent.

Apparently as long as we could document that we'd done this work, it there would be a way to deduct some sort of loss.

I didn't take part.

There will always be legal ways to do things that are wrong, because just like the corner cases in code, there are corner cases in tax code. You can exploit them to make an exception, but you know what the point of the code is.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#134

Post by nojvek »

freedomben wrote: post #88
Retra wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome of all that is that even insignificant people like you know that it happened and upset people. The alternative of protests that never happened certainly don't have your (or anybody else's) attention in nearly the same way, obviously.

I don't disagree, but your comment could be improved by removing the "even insignificant people like you" part. That felt unnecessary.

To he fair, aren't we all insignificant in the grand scale of things?

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#135

Post by sailingparrot »

humanrebar wrote: post #65
sailingparrot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Why do you assume no one is? This has been discussed at length during the last French presidential election for example. See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-ha... .

> Why do you assume no one is? Because they're picketing Apple and not the National Assembly?

As far as I know, the French national assembly doesn't make the law in Ireland, so I fail to see the point.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#136

Post by owebmaster »

ageek123 wrote: post #130
StudentStuff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other direct action can citizens take to force Apple to comply with the law? Better to shut their stores down than let them keep operating illegally, the French tax authorities should be arresting and charging management with tax fraud for their illicit scam. Apple is stealing from you and me, increasing our taxes with these tax scams.

As has been pointed out numerous times here, Apple is complying with the law.

Therefore the only available solution is to occupy the corporations until the laws change to society's benefits.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#137

Post by owebmaster »

petre wrote: post #109
westiseast wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland allowed Apple a loophole where they were incorporated there, but non-resident, and therefore no tax. It was a sweetheart deal and Ireland got jobs and investment. The EU said no, wants the back tax to be paid.

Retroactive taxes and tax regulation? It's too bad the EU officials did not think about that loophole before it was abused.

Not too bad, you just go after the abusers. Why not?

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#138

Post by owebmaster »

humanrebar wrote: post #65
sailingparrot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does no one get mad at the governments who have the large tax loop holes? Why do you assume no one is? This has been discussed at length during the last French presidential election for example. See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/macron-ha... .

> Why do you assume no one is? Because they're picketing Apple and not the National Assembly?

Would you be discussing the occupation of the National assembly here in HN? Did you the last time?

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#139

Post by soVeryTired »

ageek123 wrote: post #130
StudentStuff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other direct action can citizens take to force Apple to comply with the law? Better to shut their stores down than let them keep operating illegally, the French tax authorities should be arresting and charging management with tax fraud for their illicit scam. Apple is stealing from you and me, increasing our taxes with these tax scams.

As has been pointed out numerous times here, Apple is complying with the law.

Complying with the letter of the law. Not the spirit.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#140

Post by usr1106 »

ageek123 wrote: post #130
StudentStuff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other direct action can citizens take to force Apple to comply with the law? Better to shut their stores down than let them keep operating illegally, the French tax authorities should be arresting and charging management with tax fraud for their illicit scam. Apple is stealing from you and me, increasing our taxes with these tax scams.

As has been pointed out numerous times here, Apple is complying with the law.

The law is not a mathematical equation, complying with the law not a boolean clearly true or false.

Apple makes huges efforts to violate the spirit of tax law (that a business making good profit should pay quite some taxes) while trying to avoid that authorities / courts can prove it. Actually they have been fined already, they are still appealing. So whether they comply with the law is formally undecided.

Edit: Not sure whether "fined" is the correct legal term. They have received some kind of "letter" that they have not paid what was legally required in the past and they are obliged to pay the missing sum (13 billion EUR).

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