That's roughly $5000 per Irish citizen. A good day for those chaps! Presumably they will be paying interest on all this borrowed money, yes? As well as late fees for non-payment?
If only.
Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#52NOTE: Headline is misleading.
Actually what they are starting to do is put the money into escrow while the case moves slowly through the courts. Ireland is not yet receiving money for back taxes.
Ireland's position is still that the taxes are not owed and that the government made no improper deals.
It will take some years before the taxes are actually paid to Ireland or Apple gets the money back from escrow.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#53It's weird that the EU has a monetary union, but so much difference in corporate income tax rates. Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_banking_crisis It's a leak in the EU system, and it needs to be plugged. Just imagine what a unified income tax rate in the EU wou…
Monetary union without a fiscal union. It is a slightly odd position, but most countries aren't ready for the sovereignty transfer implied by centralising fiscal policy. The politics of paying for Greek pensions just doesn't work.
10 years ago, the bond spreads of sovereign bonds would have reflected this accurately, where Greece would have a higher YTM than Germany.
The idea of the euro is convenient, but since the crisis of 2007-2009 + various (Greek) scares, it's devolved into a "cake and eat it" situation.
A country cannot devaluate its currency (Sweden still has this freedom if it so wanted).
I'm not sure what the solution is, but to start, I would homogenize corporate tax rates, and discourage tax-shopping inside the EU.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bear in mind that countries like France have even lower rates in practice due to various loopholes for their largest corporations Ireland also has lower rates in practice due to allowances for their largest corporations: Apple's allowance afforded them an effective rate of <1%, hence the $21 billion.
Ireland is not the only loophole: Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands made "special" deals with large corporations, too. https://www.ft.com/content/7ce5bf96-a83d-11e7-ab55-27219df83...
Can confirm; working in the Netherlands right now for a large organization which basically got granted 10M tax deduction for innovation which boils down to implementing React in our frontends, doing microservices in Kubernetes, and building CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins....
As a small company you can apply for this same innovation thing and get 17K tax deduction, and you have to put 500 hours into it. It's rediculous.
It's called "WBSO (Wet Bevordering Speur- en Ontwikkelingswerk)". Hoi Jan.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#55It's weird that the EU has a monetary union, but so much difference in corporate income tax rates. Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_banking_crisis It's a leak in the EU system, and it needs to be plugged. Just imagine what a unified income tax rate in the EU wou…
Yeah, obviously some people are against a tax union, for example Luxembourg profitted from being a tax haven, and guess what the former PM (and before that Fin Min) of that country is doing now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker
What did the Panama Papers really unearth? Has there been _any_ effect?
Who are the UBOs of these Luxemburg entities? Happy activist investors? Or wealthy family funds who funnel the money to CH and the Caribbean?
A leaking bucket.
The rules around taxation in a global economy where mainly ideas/IP are shuffled around needs to evolve.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bear in mind that countries like France have even lower rates in practice due to various loopholes for their largest corporations - https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/france-has-lower-effe... - effective tax rate of 8.2% as of 2013. The leak in the system is consolidated tax base, not different tax rates. That is, booking revenue (especially digital revenue) from sales across the whole of the EU in a single EU co…
> Bear in mind that countries like France have even lower rates in practice due to various loopholes for their largest corporations Ireland also has lower rates in practice due to allowances for their largest corporations: Apple's allowance afforded them an effective rate of <1%, hence the $21 billion.
Irish effective corporate tax is 11.8%.
The deal with Apple was considered a sweetheart deal and is illegal (under EU law but not Irish) and not available to other companies.
OP is right correct approach is a consolidated tax rate/base across EMU.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#57It's weird that the EU has a monetary union, but so much difference in corporate income tax rates. Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_banking_crisis It's a leak in the EU system, and it needs to be plugged. Just imagine what a unified income tax rate in the EU wou…
> Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago
The two are not related, things just don't work that way. The size of the Irish government's assumed liabilities and the bailout was relative to the size of capital inflows into Ireland primarily from the continent, it was quite large relative to the size of the Irish economy whether counting or foreign corporations or not. It's not a good idea to just put those two things next to each other and just sort of imply that they are related.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#58It's weird that the EU has a monetary union, but so much difference in corporate income tax rates. Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_banking_crisis It's a leak in the EU system, and it needs to be plugged. Just imagine what a unified income tax rate in the EU wou…
Not any less crazy than being in a monetary union where you do not control your own currency or inflation and where the body who does (ECB) is technically outside of the political system and out of reach of both the national and EU electorates. Essentially because of the above what you call crazy is the only option for those countries to survive. When you can’t make yourself cheaper than Germany because of the Euro t…
Why is that odder than the Bank of England, which sets interest rates and is also technically outside of the political system.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#59> Apple was hit by the European Commission with a $21 billion bill for back taxes in 2016. > It’s starting to pay the funds You know, I was fined for not paying my installments (not my taxes! just my installments) in 2017 and these guys didn't pay their back taxes for two bloody years and were not charged hefty penalties and interest for it. Really, blood boiling unfair.
Absolutely, I agree 100% One year I made a mistake on my taxes and my refund was $1000 more than it should have been. Six months later not only was I fined for the mistake and forced to pay back the $1000, I had to pay interest on that $1000. (Canada) This year when the government owed me $6000 in overpaid taxes, why didn't they pay me interest on my money they were holding...?
This is why so many people recommend having the least amount withheld from you paychecks. The logic is that it is better to owe on tax day, than to get back. If the money is in the gov't accounts, they get the benefit. If it is in your hands, you get the benefit. You just have to be disciplined enough to pay what you owe when it is due.
Re: Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland
#60I'm glad this is happening, hope they'll close this Double Irish Dutch Sandwich loophole for good.
I don’t. Not unless European countries plan to lower taxes. High tax rates are what causes these accountancy gymnastics. If the EU just charged a flat 10% tax — and actually enforced it, tax revenues would rise and these loopholes would be unneeded. Foreign companies would actually relocate to Europe by choice and not by necessity. Unemployment would also drop as a result. Business would boom.