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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

#311

Post by ChrisLomont »

jeremysalwen wrote: post #304
speleding wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In what hypothetical world does Amazon disappear and no other business takes its place?

In made up worlds they could work for magic company and make trillions of dollars a year, I'm sure.

In the current world workers choose to work there.

There are usually many other choices available that were discarded by those workers. What if all replacements were just like those numerous other companies that the current workers didn't choose? That seems more likely than some company appearing that gives them vastly better options.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#312

Post by mrlala »

bagacrap wrote: post #301
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethical problem here is the consequence of the same game theory you're citing as a solution - the next country can always cut taxes more

I'm sorry, I still don't see the ethical implications. Is universally lower taxation inherently unethical?

>Is universally lower taxation inherently unethical?

When services that take care of people depend on taxes then yeah lower taxation without a backup is inherently unethical.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#313

Post by josefx »

rplnt wrote: post #283
throw0101a wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

> or act as if it was paid, and paid whatever it would have paid from it to the EU budget

Yeah, lets treat this as a fine and fine them $1 for every million it cost the other EU members. Lessons learned: you can get away with everything if you are just bold enough.

By agreements they signed they are supposed to collect the taxes in a fair manner, so requiring them to collect the taxes they didn't seems to be the least they can be required to do. That would also have the side effect of making every company think twice about using an EU country as a tax haven.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#314

Post by mrlala »

soneil wrote: post #125
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.

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…

Honestly though what a bunch of bullshit to build you modern economy on being a tax haven.

What a fucking world we live in sometimes.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#315

Post by 6510 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #305
6510 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We clearly do all have officials who should be dealing with this. I wonder if they can be persecuted for treason.

That's going to be difficult to organise in a plutocracy. There are insane sums being spent in organised campaigns to limit the ability of governments to interfere with this ethic of systemic financial capture.

There might be a sweet spot where plutocracy is incompatible with kleptocracy. When you own a government you'd want some level of property maintenance. When you want to enrich yourself with public money you want as much of it as possible. The long vs the short game.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#316

Post by fladrif »

chii wrote: post #96
fladrif wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

> Given unequal societies, economic growth ... serve to increase inequality that's not true. Especially if you view it from the angle of absolute poverty. I wouldn't care that Bezos has another bazillion dollars due to economic growth - because with said growth comes more economic opportunities for the poor. Where once they had no economic value, there could be from being an amazon deliverer. Where once there was no…

The poor never had no economic value to begin with, the question merely becomes who is the latest in the line of exploiters. When they have no power and no leverage they are forced to work for peanuts in menial jobs that can just as easily replace them. In an increasingly automated society the lowest tier of human labor slowly resembles replaceable cogs; how much would a business pay for those?

Economic growth does lift all, but in an unequal society disproportionately lifts those who are already well invested in it. It will barely improve the lives those at the bottom with no equity in the market, perhaps with slightly better consumer-grade technology, but nothing in terms of income, social safety, or health that comes with climbing out of poverty.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#317

Post by avianlyric »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #286
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.

The EU has, it has some very strong rules/laws that prevent many forms of state aid (frequently brought up as a reason why countries should leave the EU). These rules/laws are given force via international treaties signed when countries join the EU, including Ireland.

The EU are say that Ireland’s laws break these EU treaties, and are thus invalid. There’s probably some valid questions regarding why the EU acted now, and not previously. But ultimately if those treaties has provide no time limit on enforcement, then the EU is free to pursue remediation whenever it wants. Today, tomorrow or two decades time.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#319

Post by kbenson »

xyzzyz wrote: post #275
gridlockd wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure make-belief. You should buy if a purchase is cheaper than renting. Guess what, it never is when interest rates are at zero. Rent is determined by what people with jobs can pay, property prices are determined by what international investors with deep pockets and easy credit can pay. Which one are you? If you are the former, you will be paying down a mortgage that you can barely afford. You will be a slave…

property prices are determined by what international investors with deep pockets and easy credit can pay. The international investors with deep pockets own very, very, very few properties compared to regular people. What if you lose the ability to pay? How secure is your paycheck really? What if you lose the ability to pay rent? How does that make you any better off? Keep your cash, and invest it somewhere else. I ha…

Not to mention, you'll still be paying those same mortgage payments (unless you refinance) a decade or two from now after the market has changed, and generally it goes up (even if it should only average going up by the amount of inflation).

I bought my house 6 years ago. Rent prices have gone up about 30% in that time. I used to think my payment was crazy compared to renting, not I know of people renting much worse locations that are paying more, and I'm about to drop the mandated PMI because I dropped below 80% of the principal left to pay, so my payment will go down be a couple hundred more.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#320

Post by zubairq »

httpsterio wrote: post #68
zubairq wrote: post #61

Living in Denmark and having worked for the tax system (SKAT) here I am glad that this ruling was overturned. I believe that Margrethe Vestager should clean up the tax system here in her home country of Denmark before trying to clean up the tax system in Ireland. The tax system here is slow, corrupt, beaurocratic, and prosecutes the weak and vunerable, while letting people who are famous, or people who owe billions t…

What's wrong with the Danish tax system? Do you have gripes on the technical side, how its hard to use as a consumer or what?

I guess it is not easy to say what is wrong with the system as there are many deep rooted cultural issues at play here. What I have seen however is that the danish tax system has fined many well intentioned tax payers, often when the problem was that the SKAT themselves have made a mistake. And then at the same time many people who run businesses are able to avoid tax by negotiating with SKAT. I guess the problem is that instead of being run as a public service which is funded by the public, it seems to be run like a business now, trying to get income any way it can. This is partly caused by the compartmentalised departments in Skat and internal prosecution targets
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