Next time EU needs to hire the lawyers that Apple had. Is sad to see corporations milking the planet
Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
141–150 of 485 posts
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#142From 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.
This case has nothing to do with income taxes. In Ireland we actually pay more than Germany with the additional USC taxes (which is essentially income tax in disguise).
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#143Isn't the obvious answer to this an EU wide corporation tax or minimum corporation tax rate?
No, this isn't about Ireland only levying 12% corporate tax (which is already a beggar-thy-neighbour race to the bottom).
This is about Ireland abetting Apple (and every other large US tech and pharma firm) to not even pay the 12% but pretend that all of its EU profits were created in Bermuda, BVI or some other zero-tax offshore tax haven. (Via the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich legislation they offered until this year, or the newer and improved "Patent Box" law.)
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
They pay VAT on the value they add between what they buy and what they sell. Hence, Value-Added Tax.
no they don't, they collect it, but the consumer pays it this is the entire principle behind VAT
You're actually both right.
A company collects VAT from customers when they purchase. But it also buys from suppliers at a lower value. It pays the difference in the two VAT numbers (from customer-to supplier) to the VAT authority.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#145Irish media spinning this as a win for the irish people, while there are ongoing talks of increasing income tax on normal people to help cover the cost of this pandemic. Disgraceful.
It sort of is. And isn't. It's a helluva mess we've got ourselves into. Ireland has built its modern economy on being attractive to multinationals. And it's worked. 10 MNCs alone pay 40% of all tax revenue in the country. They've brought jobs and wealth to a country that was previously big in dairy & emigration. For the generation above me, the career path was study, leave, earn your money elsewhere - and perhaps com…
Is it a race to the bottom though?
I mean, a race to the bottom in the normal sense is cutting taxes or spending money on attracting these companies. We help these companies evade other countries' taxes, not our own.
Also, officially, the entities involved in the tax evasion are not related to the entities that actually employ people. Would Google move it european customer support offices without this tax deal? Theoretically, they could take advantage of it without employing anyone in ireland.
It's all horribly ambiguous. I've never really understood how it works.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#146Earlier 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.
The causality is backwards. European developers are unable to bid 2 million dollars for a house, which is why they're still cheap (compared to the bay).
Give it time though! The Dublin NIMBYs scream and shout anytime anyone tries to build anything, and then wonder why only tech workers can afford to live in the city centre.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#147Isn't the obvious answer to this an EU wide corporation tax or minimum corporation tax rate?
No. Tax is not an EU competency, which is what the whole point of this appeal was from an Irish perspective. Of course it could be made one as part of a treaty, but I don't see that France/Germany's approach to taxation is inherently better than Ireland's.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Doesn't really make sense to buy at this price point though. Looks like one can rent an apartment of that size for 1200 EUR a month in Munich.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finding moral companies that doesn't do unethical things to avoid tax is not hard. I'd claim that the absolute vast majority don't.
So how would I go about determining whether a company I want to buy from doesn't do unethical things to avoid tax? It's everywhere and nowhere. For larger companies it's just a cost/benefit exercise - there are professionals and an industry built around making and executing these decisions. If the rewards are large enough, they'll do it. How can I, as a consumer, work out if Apple is paying the correct tax on the app…
You probably don't. But when you come across that information you can decide what you want to do with it.
Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, really? 20000 EUR per square meter, for small apartment in Munich? That's... more than I expected.
Even if it's half cheaper, a family house of 80-100m^2 costs beyond 600K which is way beyond affordability range of a couple both working as software engineers let alone people with non-tech jobs.
Why is that? Like, on the US west coast, ballooning home prices makes sense because their cities are in valleys with a fixed amount of land, but munich looks like it has a bunch of farmland around it that could be converted into housing increasing supply and thus decreasing prices. This coming from someone in chicagoland which has 9.5 million people but housing isn't crazy because the metro area sprawls 30-40 miles out into what used to farmland.