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Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

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Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#361

Post by htruane »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #166
Isn0gud wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but renting doesn't give you that sense of security when you are thinking of having kids versus owning your own place. When you're renting the thought of the landlord kicking you out if the rental market should suddenly shift is a huge axe to child planning for most couples. Owning you own place offers a more secure feeling and belonging to a community.

Renters in Munich have very good protections. You effectively cannot be evicted without cause (and evidence), and most contracts are indefinite length (unless you are explicitly looking for <1 year).

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#362

Post by joejoeshabadoo5 »

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…

Can you point to any examples of higher taxes spurring economic growth?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#363

Post by anonymousDan »

avianlyric wrote: post #317
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Well no, the EU just lost the case. Taxation is not an EU competency. The court case was about whether Ireland gave taxation opportunities to Apple that were unavailable to other companies, which was shown to not be the case.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#364

Post by 6AA4FD »

iguy wrote: post #325
josefx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 leas…

Seems like there's a sovereignty issue here. If you negotiate a deal with the highest authority in Ireland, and they sign off on it, are you done? Why do you have to care what other deals they have made with other parties? Or is nothing Ireland does binding, until someone else with real power has counter-signed it?

All international agreements represent a sacrifice the "highest authority" makes, setting their reputation and future ability to make agreements as collateral. The "highest authority" further diluted its own authority by making a corporate deal that went against previously made agreements with its actual peers (states), damaging the collateral it already put up.

Whatever ideas you have about the state needing to have the highest authority in the land, if we follow that through by not holding them accountable for agreements made, then that actually substantially dilutes the power the state can have.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#365

Post by ghostwriter »

sideeffffect wrote: post #341
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…

This problem has a rather profound solution: Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Consolidated_Corporate_... Companies should have never been taxed based on a virtual, and fundamentally nonsensical, figure as the location of their headquarters. They should be taxed based on substantial things, like (the location of) capital, labour and sales. This is what CCCTB establishes. Stat…

> essentially robbing the state where the profit was generated.

It's a very interesting line of thinking when a company that produces new value and makes money by providing the value to the customers by voluntary transactions (and regardless their location) somehow is considered a robber of the state that produces nothing.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#366

Post by cool_dude85 »

ghostwriter wrote: post #365
sideeffffect wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem has a rather profound solution: Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Consolidated_Corporate_... Companies should have never been taxed based on a virtual, and fundamentally nonsensical, figure as the location of their headquarters. They should be taxed based on substantial things, like (the location of) capital, labour and sales. This is what CCCTB establishes. Stat…

> essentially robbing the state where the profit was generated. It's a very interesting line of thinking when a company that produces new value and makes money by providing the value to the customers by voluntary transactions (and regardless their location) somehow is considered a robber of the state that produces nothing.

It's a very interesting line of thinking when a government that allows a company to incorporate, protects the company's physical and intellectual property by force and with a large legal apparatus, enforces the company's contracts, trains the company's workers, is somehow considered a robber when they ask the company to pay taxes.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#367

Post by 6AA4FD »

logicchains wrote: post #58
fladrif wrote: post #49

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. Given the tax loopholes that are often taken advantage of, I would hardly say that the countries or cities they reside in are beneficiaries in as far as tax income, though they definitely have a hub effect of drawing people into the locations they are in. Whether that is…

>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…

>Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary

You mean all of the workers at foxconn benefiting from their innovative suicide nets?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#368

Post by Joky »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #366
ghostwriter wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> essentially robbing the state where the profit was generated. It's a very interesting line of thinking when a company that produces new value and makes money by providing the value to the customers by voluntary transactions (and regardless their location) somehow is considered a robber of the state that produces nothing.

It's a very interesting line of thinking when a government that allows a company to incorporate, protects the company's physical and intellectual property by force and with a large legal apparatus, enforces the company's contracts, trains the company's workers, is somehow considered a robber when they ask the company to pay taxes.

> trains the company's workers

How much of these products are designed and built in these Europeans countries though?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#369

Post by Already__Taken »

ghostwriter wrote: post #365
sideeffffect wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem has a rather profound solution: Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Consolidated_Corporate_... Companies should have never been taxed based on a virtual, and fundamentally nonsensical, figure as the location of their headquarters. They should be taxed based on substantial things, like (the location of) capital, labour and sales. This is what CCCTB establishes. Stat…

> essentially robbing the state where the profit was generated. It's a very interesting line of thinking when a company that produces new value and makes money by providing the value to the customers by voluntary transactions (and regardless their location) somehow is considered a robber of the state that produces nothing.

Nothing is created in a vacuum, the state produced customers in good health to live long enough to buy shit, enough spare cash to afford it, and enough infrastructure to get it to them as well as educated enough to use it which is the reason that "value" exists at all.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#370

Post by 6AA4FD »

chii wrote: post #98
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…

> 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. same old argument that marx has - that capital ownership (and by extension, capitalism) is the cause for such inequality. I personally don't think all inequality is the same, and inequality is what drives people. There's a reason why communism, and their strive for equ…

Does inequality drive you? Personally, I don't work because I want to enjoy more goods, services, or life stability than my friends or family. I work because I want to be able to afford my own health insurance and pay my own grocery bill. I don't think my interest in doing that is really a function of anyone else's insurance or economic status.
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