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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

#561

Post by AmericanChopper »

vasco wrote: post #357
anonymousDan wrote: post #233

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…

I think you make it seem like EU doesn't care at all about what member states do in regards to taxation but there's many limitations to what can be done by any member state in order to harmonize and prevent corruption etc. This in practice makes the EU have a lot of say in regards to taxation. Moreover the EU has special rules to limit moving funds to jurisdictions that have taxes that are deemed too low (read tax ha…

The EU directly writes tax legislation for countries all over the world with the use of their black and grey lists, which restrict companies in those jurisdictions from trading with the EU, or trading with companies that trade with the EU, or from using any banking in the EU or banking that is especially connected to the EU.

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

#562

Post by ars »

rolisz wrote: post #549
ars wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their competition also needs to pay these taxes. There's no free money - adding to corporate taxes just makes things more expensive for the consumer.

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

#563

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rolisz wrote: post #549
ars wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the tax raises all of their costs and it's a competitive market then they'll all have to raise prices, because competitive market = competitive pricing and it has to come from somewhere.

The most common case where it doesn't raise prices is when they don't have any competition and are already charging the monopoly price, so the money has to come from the company because if there was any more to extract from the customer, the monopolist would have done it to begin with. But we don't really like those markets or want to promote their continued existence.

What this doesn't depend on much is the form of the tax. If it's a competitive market then VAT and corporate income tax are both getting passed on to the customer. If it's a monopolist then either one will typically come out of the monopoly rent, because charging the customers more would bankrupt them or cause them to extend the life of used goods instead of buying new ones etc.

However, corporate income tax is generally easier for multinational corporations to avoid than VAT, so they have a pecuniary interest in making people think that VAT is worse than income tax.

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

#564

Post by nothrabannosir »

cco wrote: post #539
benoau wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption with a twist: the government is the one who got the kickback.

The opposite, no? The government accepted _much_ less money than is required in exchange for jobs for their constituents. This is an example of a government prioritizing benefits for some of their constituents (emphasis on some) over the collection of tax dollars (direct benefit to the "government") or monetary reward for themselves (corruption).

Apple settled on Ireland precisely because of that tax scheme. Had Ireland levied taxes at a normal rate, they wouldn't have gotten any dollars. The choice for Ireland was between jobs and nothing.

Apple (& al) played countries out against each other and had Ireland not done it another one would've. It's a tragedy of the commons, and as always, that can only be solved through collective action (cue TFA).

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

#565

Post by Zuiii »

K3V1N_FLYNN wrote: post #486

Eventually Apple will pull out of Europe and I’ll be sitting back laughing my ass off.

I hope so too. Maybe if apple and google finally pull out, the EU will be forced to innovate again. I'm sick of only having two shades of poo to pick from.

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

#566

Post by mig39 »

jwildeboer wrote: post #468
anonymousDan wrote: post #233

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…

It’s a final ruling. Not a current (over-)ruling as you paint it. This is a decision from the European Court of Justice. No appeal possible. The 13B€ are already in an escrow account and will now be released.

The person you're replying to used (over-)ruling as in it was overruling a previous decision of another court.

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

#567

Post by stiray »

qwytw wrote: post #492
badpun wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shorter waits for specialist visits and advanced imaging procedures Those are not health outcomes, but merely services KPAs. The KPAs may be better, because a portion of population can't afford the services, so they don't have to be serviced at all.

> can't afford the services, so they don't have to be serviced at all. If that's true how could: > The USA generally has higher 5-year cancer survival rates Still be true? Not providing any services to a significant proportion of population would result in a much lower average.

Not if they are not part of statistic as they cant afford it.

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

#568

Post by mr_toad »

stoobs wrote: post #465
Supernaut wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAT is a tax paid by the consumer, not the manufacturer. If you buy an iPhone, it's you that pays the VAT on it, not Apple.

VAT is collected by the retailer and paid to the exchequer of the country of sale. The VAT sum is recorded at the time of sale, but the whole amount sits in the company finances until the VAT is settled with the exchequer. The company holds the VAT sum between collection and settlement, potentially benefiting from the temporary cash flow in that period.

Sales taxes are collected by the seller for reasons of convenience. They are intended to act as taxes on the consumer. For political reasons this is as not obvious as possible.

If they weren’t taxes intended to fall only on the consumer then:

* businesses wouldn’t be able to claim back sales taxes on their purchases.

* consumers wouldn’t be personally liable for taxes on goods they import.

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

#569

Post by b112 »

martinald wrote: post #520
b112 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I could go into a lot of reasons, but I'll keep it simple. It is incredibly rare for governments to break that cycle. This has been demonstrated over and over. Thus, there is no end in 35 years. There is just perpetual 50% taxes to interest on debt. This means that as it is a persistent state, not perpetually losing 50% tax revenue would make an enormous difference. It's just not helpful.

Think of it the other extreme though. Imagine governments never borrowed and only used actual 'cash' to build things. I suspect that virtually nothing would have been built over the past 200 years and the world economy would be 1% the size it currently is. I think you are right in that governments (probably?) shouldn't be funding day to day spending anywhere near as much as they do with debt. This has been a more rec…

Think of it the other extreme though. Imagine governments never borrowed and only used actual 'cash' to build things. I suspect that virtually nothing would have been built over the past 200 years and the world economy would be 1% the size it currently is.

200 years ago had vastly different taxation methods than today, so I'll stick to the last 100 years.

Your point is countered, by the fact that governments build roads, bridges, and more without any debt or by borrowing money. I think you are underestimating how large a budget governments of all levels have, especially when 50% of it is being used to finance debt. That 50% of tax income, literally disappearing to pay only interest on debt, instead could (for larger cities) literally be used to plop down cash for a bridge in one year.

A lot of this could be solved by better allocating taxation to its intended purpose. There are gas taxes, but often those taxes are appropriated into a general budget. Far better if those taxes were only used for roads, and adjusted accordingly.

(Even if you decide that some gas tax should be an 'environmental' tax, a portion of that gas tax can be allocated as 'road tax', and the above still gels. This could also be a 'tire' tax, or a 'register your car' tax, the method does not matter.)

There is a lot of nuance with taxation, but quite literally throwing 50% of tax revenue away just to pay interest to bankers is very poor form.

I want to add here that, as a Canadian, this isn't a "team" thing in the mental sphere of US politics. And regardless, every single government in the US, federal, state, and often city engages in this practice, regardless of political bent.

This is a "governments love to give things to get votes" problem, which covers all political spheres, and harms us all.

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

#570

Post by AnthonyMouse »

martinald wrote: post #502
nine_k wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically in Ireland, corporate taxes were being lowered from late 1980s until 2003, in a series of agreements with the EU regulators. It's not like Ireland lowered the taxes in a sneaky scheme, or grandfathered-in an abnormally low rate.

Just to be clear - I don't think many people have (much) of a problem with ireland's "headline" 12.5% CT rate. The problem is the selective tax rates that Ireland gave to many multinationals, often as low as 0.005% (effectively in return for ensuring x amount of jobs were created in Ireland). I think these are really very much sneaky schemes.

The problem with all of this is that it's all sneaky schemes.

You probably have something in mind for how a government is supposed to spend tax revenues. Assistance for the poor or something like that. But as a sovereign state they get to decide for themselves.

Except that as soon as you admit this there is no point in having any kind of minimum rate etc., because there are a thousand ways for the state to return the money to corporations if they intend to. Subsidize energy costs so they have the lowest electricity prices and tech companies build data centers there. Provide something like the earned income tax credit but with no phase out, subsidizing employers who hire workers there. Just offer generous tax credits and deductions in general, leaving the nominal rate high while lowering the effective rate.

There is no real way to prevent this kind of thing. Is a country that offers public healthcare subsidizing employers who then don't have to pay for employee health insurance? What if you create a 100% tax credit for constructing non-fossil power plants up to the amount of the buyer's total taxes? Apple would commission $13B in solar farms and nuclear reactors, take the credit and then turn around and sell them to get all the cash back. Can you even say that would be a bad policy? It might have a desirable result. But it would also zero out their taxes.

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