Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 485 posts

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#111

Post by kalleboo »

blibble wrote: post #108
simonh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is…

companies don't pay VAT because they claim it back on everything they buy they do however collect it

They pay VAT on the value they add between what they buy and what they sell. Hence, Value-Added Tax.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#112

Post by traveler01 »

m12k wrote: post #20

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. Ireland, Luxembourg and certain other countries are complicit in this. We clearly need bet…

Basically what we need is lowering taxes. You wouldn't have "tax havens" if you were taxing people fairly.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#113

Post by arrrg »

csunbird wrote: post #29
kasperni wrote: post #13

From 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.

The range starts at six percent (assuming full-time employment and minimum wage, it can drop lower if you are working part-time).

It’s at 15 percent for people earning the median wage (€3,300), meaning half of all Germans pay 15 percent or less of their salary in income tax. Your range if very far removed from reality. (It is true, though, that for very high incomes 35 percent aren’t the ceiling, that’s somewhere in the forties if you are making several hundred thousand per month.)

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#114

Post by 627467 »

> "This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it," Apple said in a statement.

We have come to accept that certain tax payers (ie. corporate or well lawyered individuals) can chose where their revenue should be taxed. It think it has become obvious that this freedom distorts the spirit of taxation in most (all?) countries. I think it is fair to prevent double taxation across countries but IMHO revenue should be taxed as close to the source (revenue-generating-event) as possible.

> "We're proud to be the largest taxpayer in the world, as we know the important role tax payments play in society."

The old PR line Apple (and others) have been repeating ad nauseum... No one questions your place in the ranking, people care about the proportion (rate) you end up paying. If you're among the largest companies in the world by revenue it's not surprising that you'd be among the largest tax payers.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#115

Post by majidazimi »

myspy wrote: post #65
logicchains wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What are the benefits of a fortune 500? Who are the beneficiaries? The main ones would be investors and management, including a subset of employees. Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary: look how well workers at recent Fortune 500 entries like FAANG are paid. Even after accounting for subsidised health and education benefits the average European developer is still lucky to earn even half of what the average US…

European developers don't need to live in areas though, where they have to pay 2 million dollars for a house and they have social security and health care. This lessens your argument.

I live and work in Munich and I have to pay half a million euros for a 25m^2 box. EU is cheaper than US is a fallacy.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#116

Post by traveler01 »

logicchains wrote: post #88
m12k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These people should look at Portugal. One of the highest taxers in Europe and our economy is crap.

The middle class is basically paying for the rich and poor and they don't have money to spend on the economy. We can't support our companies because their products are actually more expensive than outside products (companies pay a lot of taxes too).

It's more than known by every good economist that overtaxing isn't good for any economy.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#117

Post by majidazimi »

blp wrote: post #66
logicchains wrote: post #38

Earlier 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?

Sure. Happiest countries are in Europe with highest suicide as well. What sort of happiness is that?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#118

Post by briandear »

m12k wrote: post #20

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. Ireland, Luxembourg and certain other countries are complicit in this. We clearly need bet…

Perhaps lowering taxes is the answer. Why pay sky-high French taxes when you could pay lower taxes in Ireland?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#119

Post by sharkmerry »

jonfw wrote: post #107
myspy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as there is shareholder before stakeholder, I don't see this as a good argument. Take Amazon. Employees in warehouses are low wage and hire and fire jobs. The CEO is getting richer and richer, not everyone is profiting as well as it could be. What Europe would need is to excel in computer science as well as design and engineering. The topic is pretty lacking here and would need a push. The result would be com…

I feel like this argument lacks a full understanding of what 'net worth' even means. Bezos is not taking enough cash from Amazon to be even remotely relevant to what they pay their warehouse workers. His cash compensation in 2019 was 1.6 million. Not sure how that reflects in 2020, 2021, but the point is that Bezos is only absurdly rich in theory He is theoretically worth hundreds of billions- but his actual consumpt…

> There is no direct link between Bezos net worth and allocation of resources to laborers, and attempts to paint that picture are misguided.

If they raised wages of factory workers, profits go down, stock goes down, Bezos net worth go down. no?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#120

Post by nodamage »

627467 wrote: post #114

> "This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it," Apple said in a statement. We have come to accept that certain tax payers (ie. corporate or well lawyered individuals) can chose where their revenue should be taxed. It think it has become obvious that this freedom distorts the spirit of taxation in most (all?) countries. I think it is fair to prevent double taxation across countrie…

There's an argument to be made that since Apple is a US company, ultimately their revenue should be taxed in the US.

And ultimately that is what happened: the money Apple made outside the US was eventually taxed when they repatriated it into the US.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-pay-38-billion-in-repa...

Post reply on HN