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

231–240 of 708 posts

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

#231

Post by roel_v »

tmtvl wrote: post #183
InsomniacL wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LOL no there is not a single company or person in the world for whom 13 BILLION dollars is 'absolutely nothing'. Apple's revenue last year alone was $383 Billion.

Isn't that more than the EU defence budget from 2022? Not gonna lie, I'm kinda a little scared now. I realise that there's less than a 1 in 1 billion chance Apple is gonna set up its own military and attack the EU, but still...

Combined defense budgets of all individual member states was 214 billion in 2023. That's 'spending budget', not revenue like the 300 something billion of Apple's revenue cited above.

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

#232

Post by ajsnigrutin »

aswerty wrote: post #225

From discussions in the past, I was under the impression there was general sense that if Ireland should have legitimately taxed them to this degree. That ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs. As one country reaping the rewards of the tax for the entire European operation would be bizarre, when that country just has a medium sized support/sales operation (which w…

> That ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs.

This is hard to implement in practice.

Imagine selling in a country with 50% tax, and having a country with 10% somehwere, anywhere in the world.

For easier math, let's say you buy dildos from a chinese manufacture for 1eur (including shipping), and sell them for 11eur to end customers. You've just earned 10eur, and you're taxed 5eur, giving you 5eur of profit.

What you then do is open a company in a low-tax country, the company is "completely independent" and the owner (your cousin) works with both the manufacturer and you. You buy the dildos from your cousin for 10eur, he buys them from china for 1eur has them shipped directly to you, and you sell them for 11eur.

So, your cousin earned 9eur, and will pay 10% tax on that (90c, 8.10eur of profit) and you earned 1eur, and will pay 50% tax on that (50c, 50c of profit for you).

So instead of paying 5eur in tax, you only paid 1.40eur, and pocketed 8.6eur. Yes, there are some additional costs (another company + paperwork, some percentage for your cousin) but you still earned more.

The same can be done with patents and licences, branding deals, etc. Company in rich country made 100M of profits... just have the company in a cheap-tax country charge them 99M for licencing, 1M gets taxed in the expensive-tax country, and 99M in the cheap one.

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

#233

Post by anonymousDan »

For non-EU readers, note that taxation is explicitly not a competency of the EU (i.e. Ireland can set its tax levels to whatever it wants). The only thing in question here is whether it was applying the same taxation rules to all companies, as granting special exceptions to certain companies could be viewed as state aid (which is not allowed). Ireland claimed it wasn't, the current (over-)ruling says otherwise. This case is also specific to tax rules from many years back. AFAIK the rules have subsequently been tightened and the exemption no longer exists.

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

#234

Post by sensanaty »

petesergeant wrote: post #227

So Ireland double-dipped here by luring the tech companies, and now it gets the foregone tax anyway. Does feel a bit like the EU should get the cash, not the state that was responsible for it

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, it's not really like Ireland is demanding Apple pay suddenly, the EU is saying that Apple owes Ireland the 13B and has to make up the losses due to Ireland & Apple colluding to strike an tax deal that is unfair (for all other EU members) for Apple.

Ireland itself probably doesn't want to do this, since those deals exist for a reason.

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

#235

Post by anonymousDan »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #226
red_trumpet wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they had Ireland on their side. > "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover," the Court of Justice said on Tuesday.

>Well, they had Ireland on their side. This is one of the reasons the EU is set to remove the single country veto rule since it was open to abuse. You'll then need two countries on your side to alter the EU's rulings.

Yeah this is not going to happen.

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

#236

Post by jkaplowitz »

The Google judgment was also released by the CJEU today, but it was a separate judgment. I've found it by going to the CJEU website https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/j_6/en/ (or https://curia.europa.eu/ and then click on "en" for English), where official CJEU press releases about both the Apple and Google judgments were linked on the left under "News".

Here's the CJEU press release about the Google judgment: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

Inside that PDF press release, there is a link to to the case docket, including the final judgment and an abstract of the judgment: https://curia.europa.eu/juris/documents.jsf?num=C-48/22%20P

And here's the full judgment linked in the above docket: https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...

The full judgment is available in English and French; the abstract is available in French but not English.

I should also note that there were actually four CJEU judgments released today, not two. But the other two were unrelated to tech.

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

#237

Post by Rinzler89 »

schmorptron wrote: post #230
jkaplowitz wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is one of the reasons the EU is set to remove the single country veto rule since it was open to abuse. You'll then need two countries on your side to alter the EU's rulings. There are definitely countries calling for this rule to be removed or otherwise reformed, but I wasn't aware that the EU "is set" to do it. My understanding is that this change would itself require unanimous agreement in order to make it h…

Won't this lead to this-for-that alliances within the EU and might turn member countries against each other in the long run? "France didn't help us veto a decision we wanted, so we won't help them either on this other front" or a more straightforward "if you help us veto this tax decision we will help you veto something that would affect you later".

Definitely, but at least it's a step in not making vetos as easy as before.

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

#239

Post by Supernaut »

aswerty wrote: post #225

From discussions in the past, I was under the impression there was general sense that if Ireland should have legitimately taxed them to this degree. That ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs. As one country reaping the rewards of the tax for the entire European operation would be bizarre, when that country just has a medium sized support/sales operation (which w…

> ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs.

As I wrote in another thread, that's not how business works in the EU. If Volkswagen, incorporated in Germany, sells a car in Poland, they're not required to pay a corresponding sliver of their net profits to the Polish exchequer. It all stays in Germany.

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

#240

Post by Retric »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #232
aswerty wrote: post #225

From discussions in the past, I was under the impression there was general sense that if Ireland should have legitimately taxed them to this degree. That ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs. As one country reaping the rewards of the tax for the entire European operation would be bizarre, when that country just has a medium sized support/sales operation (which w…

> That ultimately the taxes owed should probably be paid out to the countries where the sale occurs. This is hard to implement in practice. Imagine selling in a country with 50% tax, and having a country with 10% somehwere, anywhere in the world. For easier math, let's say you buy dildos from a chinese manufacture for 1eur (including shipping), and sell them for 11eur to end customers. You've just earned 10eur, and y…

Multinational corporations have subsidiaries not cousins.

A great number of tricks go away if you treat subsidiaries as a single company. Countries are reluctant to pierce the corporate veil, but it’s all arbitrary rules.

Post reply on HN