331–340 of 436 posts
In 2014 Apple's effective tax rate was 0.005%. That is 5 cents for every $1000 in profits. Even a patent troll could do better than Ireland...
Why this blatant falsification of facts? In 2014, Apple's earnings before interest and taxes was $53,483,000 and the income tax expense was $13,973,000. That's 26.12% effective tax rate. All data from Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL . It's a similar tax rate in other years too.
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The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.
Every time this apple in Ireland tax issue comes up it makes my brain hurt, literally hurt to read all these replies who don't seem to look at this problem correctly. First, Apple did nothing illegal. There is no wrong doing here. They pay tax in every country they owe tax. Period. Second, perhaps it's not Apple that's the problem? Perhaps it's the tax that is the problem. If you have mega corps building entities out…
In 2014 Apple's effective tax rate was 0.005%. That is 5 cents for every $1000 in profits. Even a patent troll could do better than Ireland...
Why this blatant falsification of facts? In 2014, Apple's earnings before interest and taxes was $53,483,000 and the income tax expense was $13,973,000. That's 26.12% effective tax rate. All data from Yahoo! Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/financials?p=AAPL . It's a similar tax rate in other years too.
Regardless, that's their global financial accounting. It doesn't detail out the EU revenue/taxes in particular. The article linked discusses that specifically. That's where the 0.005% number comes from.
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>And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds. This is not a 'quirk' as you think. No country in the world, other than the US, tax their corporations on already taxed profits in a different jurisdiction. This actually ends up hurting the US because corporations cannot repatriate already-taxed funds without bei…
The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.
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It is well understood that retroactive changes to the law are one of the worst things a legal system can do, which is why so many constitutions ban it and why other countries (like the UK) have a strong convention not to do it. The US Constitution bans them explicitly. Yes, of course countries routinely do bad things and ignore convention and constitutional principles, but that doesn't make it suddenly OK. The low ra…
The corporation tax rate in Ireland is 12.5%, and the rate applied to Apple was (eventually) 0.005%: it's the delta between Irish own tax rate and the one applied to Apple that is deemed illegal according to this EU ruling. If Ireland want a 0% tax rate for all corporations, as far as I know they are allowed to do it. They just cannot afford it.
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Morals are irrelevant in this story. Tax law is a system of rules. There should be no second arbitrary standard people (and companies) should be expected to follow.
Why not? Rigid adherence to rules without consideration of what's going on doesn't usually end up with a better place.
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EU governments, including the Irish one, are free to set different tax rates for different industries. (They are not free to set tariffs but that is because tariffs are a core EU competency as defined in the treaties.) Member states are not free to set different tax rates for different companies . This is part of the deal of joining the EU and has been part of the treaties since the beginning. The only surprising thi…
Ireland did NOT set a different tax rate for Apple or for a specific industry that was basically just Apple. Apple simply structured itself to minimize taxes taking into account the laws at the time. Any company was free to do the same and many did. The structure is so common that there are even two terms that are in standard use to describe this structure, the Double Irish and the Double Dutch. The EU did not sudden…
Unfortunately inflation stats cannot be relied upon because they ignore large and important sectors of the economy. For example, they often don't include house prices, or stock prices, or bond prices. The real inflationary pain is being felt by pension funds but consumer price indices don't reflect that.
People here are commenting on Ireland (and other jurisdictions) engaging in tax arbitrage to attract companies and jobs. Competing on tax rates and negotiating tax deals were a huge MNC like Apple pays a ridiculous 0.005% is bad: morally wrong, cuts to public services, increases unjustifiable economic inequality and is just not fair on other much smaller firms who have to pay full whack on the tax. Apple, FBK, etc do…
You do realise that taxing company profits is corporation tax, the tax that is being discussed here?
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>And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds. This is not a 'quirk' as you think. No country in the world, other than the US, tax their corporations on already taxed profits in a different jurisdiction. This actually ends up hurting the US because corporations cannot repatriate already-taxed funds without bei…
Just like individual income tax for expats corporations only pay the difference between their foreign tax liability when moving funds to their US-based sister or parent companies, last I checked.
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Because the Pub next door pays a higher effective tax
The pub next door doesn't employee ~5000 people in Ireland and pay all taxes on those wages. If you consider the overall tax income generated by Apple as a company having a physical presence in Ireland, it's much much more than the pub next door. So Ireland probably decided to sign an agreement to have a higher total tax income by making Apple settle in Ireland rather than elsewhere.