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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

#281

Post by yashap »

alphadevx wrote: post #162
SahAssar wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the facts in dispute or just the legality of them?

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.

Indeed. My understanding is that the deal is basically Ireland saying “hey Apple, employ Irish people in Irish Apple offices, and we’ll pass whatever laws you want to allow you to pay zero corporate tax in Europe, despite massive real (pre-fudging) profits.” And it’s not just Apple, it’s tonnes of US tech giants benefiting from this. It would be illegal if Apple got special treatment, which is what the original ruling found, but the appeal finds that all major US tech companies can access these loopholes, so it’s OK.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#282

Post by jedberg »

INTPenis wrote: post #276

What could possibly be the motivation to say no to 13bn EUR in tax revenue just to suck up to big corporations like Apple? To me it stinks of private deals made behind closed doors. Why else would politicians not give a damn about their own country. As long as their ass is dry. I just hope the EU don't give up. I actually see hope when the EU is made up of people from all sorts of countries, that even a Danish woman…

> What could possibly be the motivation to say no to 13bn EUR in tax revenue just to suck up to big corporations like Apple?

Because if you do that they'll keep their offices open there, which employ a lot of Irish people, as well as bring in a lot of business travelers (current situation not withstanding). Keeping employment up, especially good tech employment, and the PR that goes with it, is probably worth a lot more than 13B.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#283

Post by rplnt »

throw0101a wrote: post #272
ogre_codes wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If they want to reform tax law, then it should be forward facing, not trying to reverse previous established policies. The EU argument was that Ireland's "previous established policies" were against EU treaty, and so the (alleged) special deal that IE gave Apple should be considered annulled since it was invalid from the day it was signed. > On this basis, the Commission concluded that the tax rulings issued by Ire…

> it was invalid from the day it was signed

Shouldn't then Ireland pay it (or act as if it was paid, and paid whatever it would have paid from it to the EU budget).

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#284

Post by dang »

mdszy wrote: post #273
dang wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lmao all 0 requests to stop, just constant downvotes for telling people, rightfully, how much boot they're guzzling

5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786339

3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22939116

9 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21198326

Also, your account's posting history is egregious: https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=mdszy. This is not a borderline call. Accounts that post like that get banned here, regardless of what they're espousing.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#285

Post by nfg »

danhanlon wrote: post #225
mapleshamrock wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd largely disagree. There's a huge amount of R&D and Engineering work being done in Ireland. On the hardware side Intel, Qualcomm, Huawei, HP, Analog Devices, Xilinx, Nokia Bell Labs and many more all have extensive R&D departments in Ireland. On the software side, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google etc. all have engineering roles advertised currently on Linkedin.

Admittedly not too familiar with the hardware R&D work going on here, I know Intel is largely manufacturing with a bit of development from things like the purchase of Movidius. For the software side, what are those R&D departments actually working on? Would you really say it's R&D and product development? From what I can see, both from my own experience and from job posts, most of the engineering jobs are themselves…

I can only speak for myself, but I’m in a group of ≈50 working on prime software R&D (as you term it) in a very trendy space in Dublin for a large multinational. I don’t want to say too much beyond that - and you’re probably right that it’s the exception rather than the rule - but it does exist.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#286

Post by LudwigNagasena »

yashap wrote: post #270

Standard Ireland stuff. They want to bring jobs to Ireland, so they create international corporate tax loopholes. My understanding is these loopholes mostly allow US tech companies to make large real profits in Europe, have them attribute to an Irish office, but then bullshit the profits away by claiming things like paying licensing fees to themselves, for their own tech, paid to a subsidiary in an even sketchier tax…

It seems to me absolutely ethical. Any country can make whatever tax laws they want to get an advantage over other countries. If the EU and its population want to ban this practice, they should reorganize the tax laws.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#287

Post by tsimionescu »

MR4D wrote: post #231
axlee wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary FANNGS, by definition, are 1% of the Fortune 500. In term of headcount, it's even lower. They should not even be part of this argument. You can't base taxation policies around the personal experience of hyper-specialized, in-demand trained professionals. Fortune 500 no1: Walmart. no2? Amazon. Are you arguing that those kinds of companies have a upward pressure on salaries?…

If I use the S&P 500 instead (easier calculation given available data for me), the the FANG is a huge portion. (Yes, 5 companies out of 500 are by definition 1/100.) No argument about headcount, though. Take a look at the second chart (bottom of "Page 1", the third actual page considering the title page and contents page). [0] Revenue may be small, but profits are huge, and market capitalization (aka "wealth") is abs…

> When it comes to creating wealth, taxation doesn't do anything but redistribute it. In order to actually generate wealth, you need capital, and people who use that capital more efficiently & effectively will become richer. It is a virtuous spiral.

Sure, it's a virtuous spiral if you're one of the minuscule number of people that the spiral is pointing to. Otherwise, you see it for what it is, wealth being siphoned from Us to Them.

Also, the level of political control that huge companies almost automatically exert greatly minimizes democracy, leading to things like the bottom 50% of Americans having almost no bearing on the political sphere, at least at the federal and state levels.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#288

Post by granzymes »

dylkil wrote: post #5

Irish 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.

Only a small amount of the judgement would have eventually gone to Ireland. The big EU countries would have gotten most of it.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#289

Post by rusk »

alphadevx wrote: post #262
rusk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Can I write off depreciation of my assets (car, house etc) against tax?

Sure! You just need to form a company, then declare your assets as belonging to your company, and not yours.

Pretty sure the tax man will call that “benefit in kind”
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