201–210 of 708 posts
prior to brexit, the UK lost a ton of US inward direct investment to Eire … Dell, Intel, Apple etc. the factors were Eire corporation tax was low and public policy was to footdrag in the attempts to set an EU minimum tax, fantastic lobbying by Irish representatives in Washington leveraging the big Irish diaspora, big subsidies that walked to the edge of the EU rules (as seen here), and an English speaking workforce w…
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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.
And if you allow that, what is the point of the European Union?
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Its just the prisoner dilemma. If you don't your competition will. We just need more spine in the country's legislation to close ANY loophole, because this wasn't illegal tax evasion, it was legal tax ellusion. The point is that EU judged this unfair by Ireland and that effectively it stole revenue from other European counties to favor jobs in ireland. Basically saying "you (country) can't have a lower tax rate than…
That will never work because the powerful will lobby the politicians to add some new loophole. The only solution is to NOT have taxes, NOT have a government and then the market is fair for everyone. Unless you are into anarchy / voluntarism you won't like this solution, so keep enjoying your broken system with increasing inequality between the top 0.01% who colludes with the government and the rest - while the middle…
Your solution would end with the reintroduction of feudalism as the only way that the rich and powerful can hold on to their wealth without it being plundered by the rich guy next door.
Markets can only be fair if everyone in the market has the same degree of financial power. This can never happen in large scale anarchies. The only chance of it happening is by having strong regulation.
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.
It's not a funding problem, it's a spending problem. Taxes are insanely high around the world.
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Universal healthcare and welfare systems aren’t free.
The welfare systems (in Europe at least) don't work. They work if you're old right now, but once the young people of today become old they won't get anything meaningful out of it. At least that's the impression I have and everyone else my age has. And healthcare is unavailable anyway. Several month long waits to see a specialist.
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…
I don't understand the ruling however, something doesn't make sense: - Apple goes to a country and makes a deal with that country - They pay the tax in the country and they comply with all the rules at that time in Ireland - After a few years the EU government says "hey, Ireland that's not a correct deal" - So they don't punish the Ireland government who didn't comply with EU regulation (as far as I understood) and r…
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…
I don't see any problem with this. They knew they were gaming the system, and knew they could get in trouble for it. The law is NOT a computer program where all outputs can be fully predicted from the source code - it also takes common sense into account.
We should just pass a law that says gaming the system is illegal, then we won't need to find silly justifications against people who game the system, but silly justifications work too.
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€13,000,000,000 is not “absolutely nothing”. It’s almost twice the entire EU defence fund budget. And just to be clear.. this is really an example of how badly Apple were actively robbing society through their tax avoidance bullshit.
> It’s almost twice the entire EU defence fund budget. The EU defence spend in 2022 was €240 billion.
https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus...
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…
I find it interesting how in american corpspeak "uncertanty" pretty much always means "our lawyers can't find a way to avoid this law without getting caught" ^^
A law that says "you aren't taxed on money you send to overseas subsidiaries" is trivially gameable. A law that says "don't evade tax" is not, so corporations hate not knowing which side of the blurry line they're on. An ethical corporation (as if that exists) would just stay clear of the blurry region and have no problem.
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…
I don't understand the ruling however, something doesn't make sense: - Apple goes to a country and makes a deal with that country - They pay the tax in the country and they comply with all the rules at that time in Ireland - After a few years the EU government says "hey, Ireland that's not a correct deal" - So they don't punish the Ireland government who didn't comply with EU regulation (as far as I understood) and r…