It's not clear what type of tax are we talking about ? Is it corporate tax on gross income ?
Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
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Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#82Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#83From the original finding: "The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 percent in 2014." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_illegal_…
Meanwhile, the working people in Germany are paying 20 percent to 35 percent income taxes in their salaries.
Working people in Ireland also pay high taxes on their income.
In Ireland you pay 20% income tax on the first €35,300, and 40% on income above this amount (if you are a single person, there are different cut-offs for married people and one-parent families).
You also pay an additional Universal Social Charge on all income over €13,000 - between 2-8% depending on your income level, or 11% for self-employed income over €100,000. Add on pay related social insurance (PRSI) of 4% too.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#84Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed - tax the little man from all angles, not the big corporation.
Taxing the little man vs the big man is not Apple’s decision. Talk to your senator about that.
I am aware, and I don't disagree. I don't even begrudge Apple for using this amazing tax scheme - they'd be foolish not to. But the argument that they're paying enough because they enable the government to milk everyone else in other ways seems entirely wrong.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#86> “This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it," Apple said in a statement. "We're proud to be the largest taxpayer in the world as we know the important role tax payments play in society." That’s a really beautiful example of spinning the story of what’s going on.
Apple pays an effective rate of 21% on foreign earnings, 35% on income earned from cash invested outside the US and over $10bn in corporate taxes overall. That doesn't include property taxes, payroll taxes, VAT, etc, etc. They are the biggest tax payer in the world.
The conventional view is that Apple pays no tax, Ive seen that asserted on HN many times, but it's just flat out not true. If you wan to say the above isn't enough, sure, fine that's an opinion you're entitled to hold. I don't even necessarily disagree, I think there's a reasonable case to be made that we are excessively incentivising the concentration of capital but that's a question for voters and politicians not individual companies.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> better to lift the worse-off up than pull the better-off down. Given a fixed amount of resources, this isn't a choice but a matter of fact. You cannot do one without causing the other. This then becomes deciding what the lowest level you're comfortable having your fellow countryperson living at with the requisite cost to those with the means.
>Given a fixed amount of resources People don't consume resources, they consume goods and services. The IPhone is valued at a much higher price than the sum of raw resource components it contains. Economic growth is what allows us to increase the amount of goods and services people can consume from a given set of resources. Economic growth is why a single farmer with modern equipment can produce more food than a hund…
Using resources as a blanket term to describe goods and services as fungible with a market that can trade them, it's probably a better descriptor of available goods and services that can be consumed instead of the fluctuating cost of said goods and services. True we could produce more goods than we have before with a lower cost, but it isn't true that this enables us to provide more to those without means as this would impact markets and thus profitability of the producers. This is a reason why farmers dump milk and eggs into fallow fields. If they wouldn't do that and instead provide them to those without, it would break the market.
I would counter that it isn't economic growth that enables the technology of today, but technical innovation that drives economic growth that enables either larger populations or a more wealthy population. Given unequal societies, economic growth is only beneficial for those who are already benefiting from the system and serve to increase inequality, but given an equal society benefits all. Therefore instead of worrying about economic growth, I propose that we invest in technical innovation that will drive economic growth as a byproduct and legislate for a more equal society to benefit the most amount of people.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also leads to salaries, taxes and more investment in the community, to keep the economy going - instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine. An alternative interpretation is that the high degree of taxes and regulations in Europe…
The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The US, until recently had a higher corporate tax rate than many European country - the latest US tax cuts brought it down to the same 21% that my native Denmark has. I'm sorry, but this 'deregulation and low taxes will fix everything' myth has been so thoroughly debunked by now that I'm sad to see it rearing its ugly head in an ot…
>The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates.
The effective rate actually paid by the top 1% was around 42%, which is not much higher than now: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/. . The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage.
>so thoroughly debunked by now
Debunked where? Here's a random paper I found showing a strong correlation between economic freedom and GDP: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49220/ . https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2019/e... also has a graph on page 18 showing a strong relationship between economic freedom and income per capita.
>What is it with this obsessive focus on supply-side economics, and complete disregard for the demand side?
Demand is a factor in short-term market dislocations, but demand cannot create long-term economic growth. Growth requires that some of the value created be saved and invested, in order to increase capital, and no amount of demand will compensate for a long-term fall in investment.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#89Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also leads to salaries, taxes and more investment in the community, to keep the economy going - instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine. An alternative interpretation is that the high degree of taxes and regulations in Europe…
Yet happiness, productivity, and lifespan are all higher in Europe. Regulation is different, and in some areas less. Who are you optimizing for?
Going by https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/, the US is more productive than most countries in Europe.
Going by https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ , figure 2.2, the US is happier than the majority of European countries.
>Who are you optimizing for?
I'm not trying to optimise for anything, rather I'd prefer people are given the chance to optimise for themselves how they spend their time and money, and the less bureaucracy they have to deal with, the easier it is for them to do this.