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Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

bbc.com

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Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#251

Post by retube »

fluffy87 wrote: post #222
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…

The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can’t attract talent because they can’t pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. There is no such cycle in Europe, and it’s all because the lack of stock options. Without them,…

Sorry that's complete nonsense. it's routine in Europe and the UK to offer stock options. what's more you're only taxed when any gains are actually crystallised - so much more attractive / less risky than the US.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#252

Post by macNchz »

alpha_squared wrote: post #234
fluffy87 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can’t attract talent because they can’t pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. There is no such cycle in Europe, and it’s all because the lack of stock options. Without them,…

> ...instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. Do most startup successes (which themselves are quite rare) result in most employees becoming rich? I've had my share of successful startup experience as an employee, and there was a nice payoff, but I'd hardly call it "rich" in any accepted definition of the word. At best, it's made up for the time I s…

I think your experience is likely the most common, but ultimately the "startup ecosystem boosting" effect being discussed really only needs the occasional company to come along and dramatically outperform, creating a couple hundred new startup-minded millionaires who want to invest or create their own companies.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#253

Post by speleding »

myspy wrote: post #62
yolomcsuperswag wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who are the beneficiaries? Literally any entity they interact with. And F500's interact a lot with a lot of entities!

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…

Keep in mind that the employees in Amazon warehouses are there of their own free will. So, however badly they are treated, Amazon is apparently providing an option to them that's better than any alternative they may have. Surely, that's better than them not having the option to work at Amazon at all.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#254

Post by smachiz »

messe wrote: post #235
rfrey wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then employees would need to immediately pay tax on the stock based on the last valuation.

I'm not sure about stock options, but RSUs are reasonably common in Ireland. Tax isn't paid on them until the vest date.

RSUs work because they're typically for already public companies.

At vest, in the US, a percentage of shares are immediately sold to cover taxes.

With illiquid stock - as in a startup - where there's no public market for it, and no one to sell it to, you can't really do that, and you're creating a tax problem for your employees.

The company can pay those taxes on your behalf - but that's expensive when a startup is explicitly paying in stock because they need the cash to grow.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#255

Post by jacobr1 »

thephyber wrote: post #236
fluffy87 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can’t attract talent because they can’t pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. There is no such cycle in Europe, and it’s all because the lack of stock options. Without them,…

> when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich I don’t think this is accurate. Even in successful startups, most employees don’t get rich. Yes, some manage to navigate the complicated financials and can afford to execute their options, but typically only valuable roles are offered stock options and not all employees can afford to execute them. Ev…

> but typically only valuable roles are offered stock options and not all employees can afford to execute them.

For early stage startups in the valley, pretty much all employees receive options. How many options, dilution and if if a positive exit will occur are all variables, but generally everyone gets an option grant.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#256

Post by alphadevx »

SahAssar wrote: post #240
alphadevx wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legality I believe. I don't think the Irish Government or Apple tried to hide anything, so the facts are out there in the public domain (Apple is a public company). More about the EC implying it was illegal, but that has now been overturned so all parties legally (if not morally, depending on your point of view...) vindicated.

If so the only part of the comment you were replying to above that was "overturned" was the word "illegal". Just wanted to make that clear, since I'm one of the people who think that it's still immoral and should be illegal.

Well in a court of law, it is the letter of the law that matters, not how we feel. So it may be immoral but is not illegal.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#257

Post by balfirevic »

betaby wrote: post #226
balfirevic wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while in most of Europe(except the East) it does not. Wait, something doesn't add up here. I see many programmers migrating from eastern to western Europe, but not the other way around. It is true that programming as a profession will offer comparatively higher standard of living in eastern Europe (when compared to other professions), but that's because the overall standard of living is lower than it is in the west…

A lot of people move from Eastern Europe to Western because the political (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) and LGBT (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland) reasons, not money.

I'm aware, but that's not related to my comment, unless you're actually claiming that programmers have lower standard of living in the western Europe compared to eastern Europe (which I believe to be false).

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#258

Post by ogre_codes »

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…

> We clearly need better tax laws to combat this, but I'm glad the commission is trying to fight this to the extent they can within current laws, and I hope they win the case on appeal.

I fully agree with the former, but—to an extent—disagree with the latter.

The thing that bothers me about this lawsuit is the fact that it is in essence an after-the-fact tax increase. If they want to reform tax law, then it should be forward facing, not trying to reverse previous established policies. Particularly not for the length of time this covered.

Globally, the US, EU, (UK now), Canada, etc, all need to get their ducks in a row and get taxation sorted out in a sane way.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#259

Post by odiroot »

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…

> instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine.

And yet in recent years, the middle class is more and more blamed for the inequality and other big problems of the world.

In multiple EU states, there's no mainstream parties representing the interests of the middle class.

At the same time the truly rich are laughing on their way to the bank.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#260

Post by pkaye »

chris_wot wrote: post #212
secondcoming wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has been in Ireland since the 1980's. A large fraction of an entire city (Cork) depend on it. It's not hard to imagine that Apple has contributed far more than $14bn to the community, and country, in that time. And it's not a figure-head office either, it has assembly lines. Countries aren't all identical. Ireland needs to be allowed tune its economic policies based on what it has to offer. It doesn't have the…

Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich... yum!

What about a Dutch crunch sandwich?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_bread

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