Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 708 posts

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#151

Post by gadders »

gzer0 wrote: post #50

I found some rather troubling aspects within the ruling itself: 1. Retroactive application of arm's length principle The Court's reliance on the arm's length principle, despite acknowledging it's not required by EU law, is problematic. As stated in paragraph 124: > "Article 107(1) TFEU gives the Commission the right to check whether the level of profit allocated to such branches... corresponds to the level of profit…

>>Yes, it might ruffle some feathers in the short term. But in the long run, it's setting us up for a tax system where everyone plays by the same rules – whether you're a small local business or a tech giant.

Yeah, but that only ever ratchets in one direction. Putting everyone on the same rules won't reduce taxes for anyone.

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#152

Post by InsomniacL »

izacus wrote: post #136
InsomniacL wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can google why do countries give tax breaks. Are you suggesting that Ireland did not benefit from this illegal deal?

Yes, I'm suggesting that Ireland as a country did not benefit from this deal. That does not mean that some Irish individuals did not.

Apple Ireland has over 60 open positions for roles like Machine Leaning or Data Analytics while similar sized countries like Finland, Lithuania, Croatia, Denmark, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary have 0.

Apple Ireland is home to Apples only self-operated manufacturing plant in the world employing ~6,000 people building iMacs to order by hand (lol). There are employment quotas to meet for the tax arrangements which is one example of how Ireland as a whole benefits.

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#153

Post by emmawatson91 »

izacus wrote: post #149
dylanredm0nd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs provided via Apple, FDI in Ireland, Tax paid by apple staff in Ireland... general spend?

There is just a tiny count employees in Ireland, mostly legal to run the sandwitch.

[flagged]

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#154

Post by Supernaut »

lm28469 wrote: post #146
SanjayMehta wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were these companies selected on the basis on employment numbers or revenue? AFAIK Apple doesn’t have so many employees in Ireland that would generate enough revenue for a 13B tax bill. So they must have been booking offshore revenue via an Irish subsidiary. When I buy software licenses here in India I’ve noticed that the billing almost always is in Ireland.

Ireland doesn't produce anything of value by itself, it's full of ghost offices claiming revenues for the entire EU market.

That is completely untrue.

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#155

Post by kasperni »

Aerroon wrote: post #131
andy_ppp wrote: post #51

It would just be really good if companies stopped avoiding tax. Most countries are already pretty much bankrupt - it's worth thinking about for every debt (US National Debt is $35.35 trillion!!) there is a rich person on the end of it with the loan as an asset earning interest. If companies avoid tax and rich people avoid tax it means more tax for normal people who work for a living.

Maybe governments need to stop spending 40-50% of the entire GDP? For example, the US federal government + state governments spend about $10 trillion a year. The US has a GDP of about $25 trillion. And the US isn't exactly known as a high tax country. France is estimated to be at 58%...

Universal healthcare and welfare systems aren’t free.

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#156

Post by steve_gh »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #116
Woeps wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the EU checks if the tax systems are fair and held to certain standards. In this case this special deal was only available to a select few companies.

Were these companies selected on the basis on employment numbers or revenue? AFAIK Apple doesn’t have so many employees in Ireland that would generate enough revenue for a 13B tax bill. So they must have been booking offshore revenue via an Irish subsidiary. When I buy software licenses here in India I’ve noticed that the billing almost always is in Ireland.

Yeah this is the way it works. The "pre-sales" of working out what you need is don e in whatever country you are in. Then at the last moment, when everything is prepared and the invoicing is ready, they transfer you to an Irish sales person who takes your payment.

And voila, the sales are all done in Ireland

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#158

Post by meiraleal »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #56
marcyb5st wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem is that Ireland, Netherlands, and Luxembourg also have veto powers when it comes to EU wide regulations. Luckily they understood this was alienating the other EU members and so they conceded to a minimum of 15% taxation rate [1] [1] https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation/business-taxa...

Yes, they are small and weak and had to concede to the big and powerful... And "alienating" is exactly my point: Those big and powerful don't want others to set lower tax rates than they have.

The Netherlands is the 5th biggest EU economy.

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#159

Post by InsomniacL »

izacus wrote: post #149
dylanredm0nd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs provided via Apple, FDI in Ireland, Tax paid by apple staff in Ireland... general spend?

There is just a tiny count employees in Ireland, mostly legal to run the sandwitch.

> There is just a tiny count employees in Ireland, mostly legal to run the sandwitch.

Utter nonsense.

Apple Ireland has more employees than Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden combined.

There are employment quotas for the tax arrangements.

> https://www.apple.com/ie/job-creation/

Re: Apple must pay 13B euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules

#160

Post by roel_v »

techpression wrote: post #5

Why is it Apple that has to pay for what Ireland did wrong? Genuinely curious here, it's not like Ireland is some random dude on the internet selling stolen goods and Apple should've known better.

" and Apple should've known better."

Of course Apple should've known better. Their lawyers warned them about the risks of these deals (I do not have internal knowledge, I just know they did, they do to everyone who enters into deals like this). For years (rather, decades) everybody bet on this being too widespread to be corrected like it is now. You can't really blame them for trying, but in the end, this is the corporate/tax version of 'fuck around, find out'.

Post reply on HN