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Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

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Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#381

Post by ptmvp »

secondcoming wrote: post #179
traveler01 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people should look at Portugal. One of the highest taxers in Europe and our economy is crap. The middle class is basically paying for the rich and poor and they don't have money to spend on the economy. We can't support our companies because their products are actually more expensive than outside products (companies pay a lot of taxes too). It's more than known by every good economist that overtaxing isn't good…

There was talk in at least the London tech scene two or three years ago about Lisbon becoming some sort of tech hub. (Personally, I'd love to move there but I'd have to learn Portuguese) But some companies that did try Lisbon out seem to have pulled back. Last I heard it a large reason was because the 'work ethic' of the Portuguese left something to be desired compared to London.

This comment is not only based on anedotical evidence, but demonstrably wrong [0] (compare hours worked between Portugal and the UK - these are significantly higher in Portugal) and perpetuating stereotypes with regards to Southern European countries.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor...

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#382

Post by jokethrowaway »

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?

Absolutely! If there is no inequality there is no profit for working more. If I can't earn more by working more then I'll just do the bare minimum and still receive my equal share.

Luckily I never lived under a communist regime to witness it, but I've seen this happen in companies with middle managers who don't care: a few employees start working very little, a few more follow suits, motivated individuals complain, see that nothing happens and then start slacking as well.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#383

Post by ghostwriter »

filoeleven wrote: post #380
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.

Those companies only exist at this enormous scale because of the societies (I.e. nation-states) that grew them. They rely on literal tons of state infrastructure and decades-worth of long-term state programs/planning that foster their growth, and that of the customers who buy their stuff.

Oh yes, the state infrastructure, the one that was built by other private companies and paid for by the money taken from other private companies and individuals. Before there is a state there is an individual acting on their own volition to organise the environment around, and to achieve something in their life, without needing a sanction from a state.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#384

Post by zeroimpl »

iguy wrote: post #349
m12k wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the current system for international taxation of trade among daughter companies was devised during a time when international trade consisted of things like bars of steel, for which there is a well-defined daily market price, so it's easy to audit and prevent companies from profit-shifting to avoid taxes. Today, daughter companies trade things like 'the Google search algorithm' and 'the Nestle bran…

This sounds like a way to tax corporate profits in proportion to the amount of VAT, property tax, employment taxes, etc. already paid in each country. Wouldn't it be simpler just to tax those things? We already collect those taxes, and can set any rates we wish. Why not just abolish the the tax on corporate profits?

I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusion, but I do think it’s important to emphasize that Apple is collecting VAT across the EU and paying large quantities of money to all EU countries as a result. The amount of tax revenue generated by VAT will be an order of magnitude larger than income tax, since the former is on revenue and the latter is on profit.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#385

Post by sjy »

traveler01 wrote: post #116
logicchains wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The effective rate actually paid by the top 1% was around 42%, which is not much higher than now: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ . . The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage. >so thoroughly debunked by now Debunked…

These people should look at Portugal. One of the highest taxers in Europe and our economy is crap. The middle class is basically paying for the rich and poor and they don't have money to spend on the economy. We can't support our companies because their products are actually more expensive than outside products (companies pay a lot of taxes too). It's more than known by every good economist that overtaxing isn't good…

Portugal’s tax take as a percentage of GDP tracks pretty closely to the OECD average. France, Sweden etc have significantly higher rates. https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#386

Post by raphaelj »

narag wrote: post #297
redisman wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and to shut down Cayman Islands and Cyprus while they're at it. It goes to show how incredibly corrupt the global elites are that they "can't" shut down money laundering by tiny island nations who would roll over in 5 seconds if told to by someone like the US. The truth is they love it because that's where they keep their money.

If you take a closer look at tax havens, you'll find that most of them are UK/US colonies, ex-colonies or de facto colonies.

You're totally right. Yet half the world are ex UK colonies so ...

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#387

Post by groby_b »

ogre_codes wrote: post #299
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…

> 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. Yet the EU sat on this for 12+ years allowing this agreement to continue. If they felt this was a concern, they should have addressed it in 2004... or any year between.

Remember when you were a kid, and your parents told you to clean your room last week, and they gave you a whole week to catch up? And then oddly, you were still on the hook even though they waited a whole week before grounding you?

Same principle. Statutes of limitation exist for a reason.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#388

Post by fidelramos »

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.

$13b seem to me an outrageous bill for those services. Could we see an itemized bill to make sure we are not overpaying the state? Or is it more like they have the monopoly of violence and we have to pay whatever they want or else?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#389

Post by anoncake »

dantheman wrote: post #122
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…

Economic growth and technical innovation go hand in hand. As the economy grows the pie gets bigger, as long as everyones absolute amount grows thats good - most people thing that some are shrinking which is not the case. Right now, some peoples are growing at faster rate.

It is not. People judge their own wealth relative to that of others. Thus reducing inequality is a lot more important than increasing total wealth.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#390

Post by fidelramos »

filoeleven wrote: post #380
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.

Those companies only exist at this enormous scale because of the societies (I.e. nation-states) that grew them. They rely on literal tons of state infrastructure and decades-worth of long-term state programs/planning that foster their growth, and that of the customers who buy their stuff.

No, huge companies exists because large accumulations of capital put to productive uses allow for better economies of scale, producing better and cheaper services and products, which the public benefits from. Our overgrown states don't foster innovation and wealth, but hinder it.
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