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

581–590 of 708 posts

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

#581

Post by mytailorisrich »

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…

No, EU states cannot set their tax levels to whatever they want. The EU imposes minima to at least corporation tax and VAT.

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

#582

Post by throwaway2037 »

systemtest wrote: post #399
NoboruWataya wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a general prohibition on EU member states granting state aid to companies, but there are exceptions to this where the aid is justified in order to promote economically underdeveloped regions. There are a lot of rules and court cases about when state aid will fall on one side or the other of that line. See eg https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid/legislatio...

The Dutch government is spending billions to keep ASML in The Netherlands. To circumvent these prohibitions, the money doesn't go directly to ASML but is invested in better infrastructure, housing and education in the local area. More trains and busses to bring people to the company, better energy grid to power all the ASML offices, more money towards STEM studies of the local universities so they are creating the ne…

    > Plus tax cuts for the employees of ASML
I had to research this claim. It looks true for some. > Ref: https://nltimes.nl/2024/03/25/cabinet-close-eu14-billion-pla...

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

#583

Post by BartjeD »

Epa095 wrote: post #455
the_optimist wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such slippery-ness or slippage. The system is fundamentally assessable with basic accounting and Econ 101. No, the 401k is not a coup. No, class-warfare advocates cannot fundamentally create value, improve the economy, or the better state of individual well-being—-either temporarily or permanently—-by wealth transfer, and their efforts typically result in gross infringement of human rights. Typically in h…

Economy is a prime example of a field where a bit of knowledge is worse than no knowledge, and nothing is more deranged than someone who has completed Econ 101, and thinking they now understand the world:-P

Most economists don't understand the world, only their theory of it. A theory which in many experiments has been show to be bonkers. Albeit useful bonkers in certain, limited, circumstances.

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

#584

Post by Nemo_bis »

elAhmo wrote: post #251

Even if this sounds like a huge fine, this is effectively meaningless, even if they end up paying it. 13 billion, for a company with market cap of more than 3 trillion is around 0.4% of their cap. Until these fines become meaningful, companies will just continue breaking the law and asking for forgiveness later, as the changes to their market cap can offset this fine in hours.

This goes to reduce Ireland's public debt, which was about 140 billion euros as of 2022. 10 % debt reduction overnight (albeit accrued over 20 years) is no small impact for a country.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSAMRIAOGGIE

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

#585

Post by izacus »

InsomniacL wrote: post #152
izacus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm suggesting that Ireland as a country did not benefit from this deal. That does not mean that some Irish individuals did not.

Apple Ireland has over 60 open positions for roles like Machine Leaning or Data Analytics while similar sized countries like Finland, Lithuania, Croatia, Denmark, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary have 0. Apple Ireland is home to Apples only self-operated manufacturing plant in the world employing ~6,000 people building iMacs to order by hand (lol). There are employment quotas to meet for the tax arrangements which is one e…

So how many decades will they have to pay taxes to recoup 13B$? :)

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

#586

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

> this directly implies no member state has agency to lower their own taxes as much.

Two words: Dutch Sandwitch

Because it’s one market, unless countries coordinate, you get massive tax loopholes with profits being shifted to tax heavens.

Practical implications override hypothetical concerns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

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

#587

Post by ClumsyPilot »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #570
martinald wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is no real way to prevent this kind of thing

You do realise that US, EU and China regularly sue each-other in WTO over this? What counts as subsidies, etc. is a constant subject of dispute. That’s normal,

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

#589

Post by Nemo_bis »

mutatio wrote: post #76
nsajko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland giving special benefits to a private company like Apple conflicts with the principles of a free and fair market.

Because tax incentives do not exist in the EU, like the German car industry.

Tax incentives to businesses are legion. They just need to be notified to the EU and pre-approved to be valid, otherwise they're null and void.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/state-aid_en

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

#590

Post by yunohn »

musiciangames wrote: post #573
yunohn wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s absolutely no employment requirement outside of any PR deals that IE may impose on Apple to satisfy their citizens. The tax evasion scheme they used does not necessitate any real humans in any jurisdictions - it’s almost literally just documentation.

I’m not sure that’s the case. I worked for Irish subsidiary of a financial software company. Management openly said the main reason we were there was for the tax benefit. We cut standard code for the product, then once a year had to fill out a form describing the ‘R&D’ component of what we had done. As I understood it, that was required for the tax treatment we received.

AFAIU it’s a soft requirement so that IE can claim that losing taxes is offset by employing (a few) people. The actual tax structuring discussed in this case and similar for other FAANG, is all about where the company is registered vs making revenue vs paying taxes, and how none of it is intuitively what you’d expect.
Post reply on HN