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Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

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Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#411

Post by xrd »

ghostwriter wrote: post #410
xrd wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the state provide roads for Amazon, and schools for the children of kids employed at the subsidiaries of Apple? I know there are a lot of details in which "state" (of all the bureaucracies) does that, but is Europe somehow exempt from that arrangement? Is your concern with the EU taking this action instead of Ireland? Isn't that going to be a race to the bottom, where "states" try to out do each other in tax…

The state doesn't provide roads and services on its own, it neither has the required qulification for building them nor posseses funds to sponsor the required effort. Firstly, it needs to take money from somewhere where a money-represented value already exists in the world and then use it to pay for the work of qualified individuals, that tend to self-organise in private entities. The work always is done and the valu…

Ok. If we take that further, the state isn't claiming credit for anything, it's people claiming it on behalf of a magical idea, right?

Are there examples of what you are describing happening in the world?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#412

Post by seppel »

xrd wrote: post #400
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.

Doesn't the state provide roads for Amazon, and schools for the children of kids employed at the subsidiaries of Apple? I know there are a lot of details in which "state" (of all the bureaucracies) does that, but is Europe somehow exempt from that arrangement? Is your concern with the EU taking this action instead of Ireland? Isn't that going to be a race to the bottom, where "states" try to out do each other in tax…

> Doesn't the state provide roads for Amazon

Amazon is already paying for using the roads, since they are by large toll-roads.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#413

Post by allendoerfer »

fidelramos wrote: post #388
cool_dude85 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Or is it more like they have the monopoly of violence and we have to pay whatever they want or else?

You have to switch we and they. We are not Apple, but we are the people of a state.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#414

Post by allendoerfer »

fidelramos wrote: post #390
filoeleven wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who do you think founded SV (and thus Apple) initially?

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#415

Post by Xixi »

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?

If you negotiate a deal with the highest authority in Ireland to access the entirety of the EU Single Market, then yes indeed you should care about EU laws. It's not like Apple is only selling iPhones in Ireland...

If you sign a deal with Nevada to sell products in the entirety of the United States, you expect federal laws to apply, don't you? Well, EU is not a federation like the Unites States, but it's half-way there. You cannot ignore Bruxelles when dealing with the Single Market, just like you cannot ignore federal laws when doing interstate commerce in the US.

I have found that EU is really something hard to grasp for non-European. And to be fair, for most Europeans too. If Ireland wants its sovereignty back it can exit the EU (and the Single Market) at any time. But then of course it won't be the gateway to the Single Market for American companies anymore...

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#416

Post by justaguyhere »

LockAndLol wrote: post #346

Honestly, if we really wanted to do something against mega-corps, we wouldn't: 1. Use their products 2. Vote for people that support them 3. Just complain and take no action Since we don't do any of the above, can't be surprised at the outcome. We are all to blame.

It is not easy to avoid these mega-corps though, they make it very hard. If you go to the supermarket, how do you know any product that you pick is not coming from a shitty mega-corp? How much time an average person is willing (or able to) spend to check they are not giving their hard earned money to a mega corp? Maybe they will spend a few hours researching when they shop for a high ticket item like a computer, but a chips bag? water bottle? 3$ chocolate?

Then there are monopolies like internet service providers. Even if people want to switch, they can't, in many places.

Unless there is mass awareness, nothing is going to change.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#417

Post by nodamage »

m12k wrote: post #209
tw04 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization has broken the social contract. You've got countless companies that truly "form" in western countries with high standards of living - the founders and leaders all reside there. But then they offshore their profits to keep more for themselves, draining that western economy and creating an unsustainable funnel of money. The problem isn't taxes, the problem is founders who believe they are above the social…

The problem is exactly taxes and tax laws. These founders live in a society where if you structure your company one way, you pay 21% in corporate tax, and if you structure it another way you pay 0%, and both are legal - which one do you think they will choose? We need to make profit shifting illegal, but it currently isn't. We can't count on founders being 'ethical' enough to not play the game optimally, we need to c…

In the case of Apple it's not really accurate to say they paid 0%. Instead, their taxes on overseas sales were deferred until they were repatriated into the US. Upon repatriation they paid $38 billion in taxes on $252 billion of income, or a tax rate of 15%.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#418

Post by sideeffffect »

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.

We both know that "robbery" was a figure of speech, but for the sake of the discussion, I can rephrase it another way.

Whether state(s) should be in the business of "producing things" is for another debate, but it's not controversial to claim that they should be in the business of taxing things.

Now, you can go about taxation the stupid way, collecting unreasonable amount of money from the wrong people/companies for the wrong things. Or you can do it the smart way. CCCTB is the smart way.

I'm not that I'm against making money. But making money should be taxed, preferably the smart way.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#419

Post by xrd »

seppel wrote: post #412
xrd wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the state provide roads for Amazon, and schools for the children of kids employed at the subsidiaries of Apple? I know there are a lot of details in which "state" (of all the bureaucracies) does that, but is Europe somehow exempt from that arrangement? Is your concern with the EU taking this action instead of Ireland? Isn't that going to be a race to the bottom, where "states" try to out do each other in tax…

> Doesn't the state provide roads for Amazon Amazon is already paying for using the roads, since they are by large toll-roads.

I haven't done the math on that kind of infrastructure project. I would be very curious (and open minded) about seeing an analysis of how payment for roads plays out, especially with toll roads.

In the Portland, OR area (where I live) there are zero toll roads. Maybe that's why I am biased to feeling like state funding these projects is necessary. If Amazon (and anyone else that uses them) were paying for them, perhaps I would think differently.

Re: Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned

#420

Post by simongr3dal »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #399
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…

> 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 fundamentally the right answer, but don't underestimate the political difficulty in getting there. Taxing "profits" in the location of the headquarters was always a seduction…

How can the tax ever be worse than a sale? Even if the tax is 100% on the profits from a sale it would still contribute to economies of scale at the production end of things thereby subsidizing all other units in countries with more favourable tax rates and increasing the profits in those countries.
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