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

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

#541

Post by jay_kyburz »

mcny wrote: post #453
jay_kyburz wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good argument for GST. With a 10% GST the Italians would have at least seen 10% of the 599.

I apologize if this is a stupid question but aren't GST and VAT (basically) the same thing? It is just an "advanced" sales tax, no? It still does not fix the problem of income tax... The big problem from what I remember from earlier is some companies like grocery stores operate on razor thin margins -- like they buy tomatoes for USD 0.90 per kilogram and sell for USD 1.00 or whatever so if we charge income tax on the…

Sorry, I don't know anything about VAT, but in Australia, consumers pay 10% on all products except food, financial services, and a few other things.

When Apple sells an phone to a consumer in Australia, 10% of the sale price is collected by the retailer, and paid directly to the government, rather giving the full sale price to Apple, then allowing Apple to work out later what was profit and what was not.

There are mixed feelings about it, but I've always liked it. If you consume a lot of stuff, you pay a lot of tax. Sounds fair to me.

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

#542

Post by noirbot »

carlosjobim wrote: post #436
noirbot wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, isn't that exactly the case here though? Ireland's law said they could do this. The EU says that's wrong, and Ireland is seemingly getting a reward for doing something illegal that the EU didn't decide was illegal for almost 30 years? Again, not disputing that this is legally accurate to how things work, but that definitely strikes me as an environment that a lot of businesses would find hard to work with. Ot…

> Ireland is seemingly getting a reward They're not really getting a reward, because this makes them much less attractive for investment. Meaning less tax revenue in the wider and longer perspective.

I guess, but given this precedent, I doubt anywhere else in the EU is going to give a better deal, so all the companies where Ireland gave them illegal deals probably won't have any reason to move to Germany or Spain or Belgium. Ireland probably gets to keep their business and tax revenue going forward, as well as getting back taxes.

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

#543

Post by noirbot »

Silhouette wrote: post #524
noitpmeder wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably these laws are published publicly, and apple has more an enough resources to hire enough lawyers to ensure they are in compliance. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. That argument is quite a stretch when the EU tends to pass relatively ambiguous legislation and leave interpretation relatively open compared to for example the legal framework in the US, when it was not some random law firm but literally the relevant national government that gave Apple the OK, and when that situation was widely known and apparently accepted for about 30 years b…

The other thing that worries me here is the EU's seeming willingness to both not intervene quickly and not provide ways for companies to know for sure that they're on the right side of EU laws until they do or don't get sued.

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

#544

Post by noirbot »

Silhouette wrote: post #526
toyg wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any company in existence now needs a lawyer who understands the Treaty of Lisbon! Hyperbole makes you look hysteric. The reality is that every other company is doing just fine, paying the tax they owe. The only companies who have to worry are shady ones like Apple (abusing tax-havens since the '80s, with Braeburn etc): it's now established that secret agreements with cosy governments will not be tolerated in the EU…

Do you really believe Apple-Ireland is the only cosy tax-based incentive that any EU member state has offered to any international company to invest and operate locally in the past 30 years? What's next? All the member states that offered attractive VAT rates when the regime was different years ago and doing so was advantageous retrospectively get reset to some baseline rate around the bloc's average and every compan…

It's also literally not the only one that got in trouble today. Google's deal with Ireland also got smacked down.

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

#545

Post by noirbot »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #325
noirbot wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a distinction without a difference. Presumably, if Ireland hadn't offered this deal, Apple would have done their business somewhere else. Sure, they may have paid some other country more taxes, but potentially less taxes than what they now owe Ireland. Apple isn't blameless here, but it definitely kinda feels like they got a little bit defrauded by the Irish government who now essentially is getting rewarded w…

Apple is a lot worse than merely 'isn't blameless'. They knew perfectly well what they were getting into and I'm confident that the current judgment would have been a scenario that their lawyers would have explored. I'm sure that if Apple thinks that they have been hard done by that they could sue the Irish government for damages in the Irish courts.

I mean, don't you see how that's bad though? Ireland gets to just lie to people, promise them things, profit from their lies and then their courts get to decide if they were wrong?

Also, everyone's stating with a lot of confidence that Apple absolutely knew this was illegal under EU law. Is that in evidence in the case? Have there been other prosecutions of other EU states for doing this?

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

#546

Post by lifeformed »

gleenn wrote: post #489
gamblor956 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many types of income cannot be offset nor or they covered by tax treaties. That's news to me and I've been doing international tax for 15 years. Please, tell me what types of income earned by a U.S. expat isn't covered by a tax treaty? It is not uncommon to pay more taxes in aggregate as an expat than you would pay in either country separately. This is objectively false. For an expat, income taxes paid to a resident…

My understanding, despite the fact I'm definitely not an accountant, was that making over $100K abroad meant you would be double taxed on all of it over that amount. I believe I heard many wealthy Americans abandoning their citizenship just due to this fact.

You get credit for the taxes you paid in the foreign country for the amount over that threshold.

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

#547

Post by superkuh »

BadHumans wrote: post #317
superkuh wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes don't fund government programs. Taxes are a way to mitigate the buying power of private capital when it comes to bidding against government for things. Governments just create money supply for programs. It's not tax money. That's just an old cliche.

Need a citation or some reading for this because it sounds like something you believe without cause.

It's literally in the 2nd paragraph of the wikipedia article. It's not a controversial statement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending

>Spending by a government that issues its own currency is nominally self-financing. *However, under a full employment assumption, to acquire resources produced by its population without potential inflationary pressures, removal of purchasing power must occur via government borrowing, taxes, custom duties, the sale or lease of natural resources, and various fees like national park entry fees or licensing fees. When these sovereign governments choose to temporarily remove spent money by issuing securities in its place, they pay interest on the money borrowed.* Changes in government spending are a major component of fiscal policy used to stabilize the macroeconomic business cycle.

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

#548

Post by pests »

BadHumans wrote: post #317
superkuh wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes don't fund government programs. Taxes are a way to mitigate the buying power of private capital when it comes to bidding against government for things. Governments just create money supply for programs. It's not tax money. That's just an old cliche.

Need a citation or some reading for this because it sounds like something you believe without cause.

Not saying this was his intent, but this is part of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which says governments print money to provide services, and collect taxes as a matter of policy to legitimatize the currency, and for inflation and unemployment controls.

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

#549

Post by rolisz »

ars wrote: post #531
vasco wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAT is paid by the consumer, not the business. The business merely collects it in behalf of the tax office. Starbucks contributes 0 taxes by collecting VAT. Look up the definition of consumption taxes as opposed to corporate income taxes. If you want to give other examples of ways companies contribute you can mention property taxes on owned properties, or jobs created which usually also have some part of pension etc…

Corporate tax is also paid by the consumer. They raise prices by exactly the amount of their corporate tax.

Or not. If their competition doesn't raise prices, maybe they won't either.

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

#550

Post by mr_toad »

itake wrote: post #535
elevatedastalt wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny is America has some of the longest paths to a Green Card (for Indians and Chinese at least), but is very very happy to tax them as a resident the moment they spend a year in the country. Indians effectively pay taxes as residents without any permanent residency benefits for decades

Are there any countries where people on a visa don't need to pay taxes like everyone else? If I got a job in India, would I not need to pay taxes?

In most countries you’re technically supposed to pay taxes even if you’re working there illegally.
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