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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

#701

Post by stale2002 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #575
stale2002 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as a sovereign state they get to decide for themselves. Not really no. The results of the court case prove that. > There is no real way to prevent this kind of thing Well. No way, except for through the result of an EU court case that just ruled that the tax scheme wasn't allowed. > Apple would Woulda coulda shoulda. The real question is "did they"? And the answer is no. They didn't do these other schemes, and…

You seem to be assuming that this isn't an iterative process. The process continues until the scheme is convoluted enough to satisfy the court while still being effective in attracting companies through de facto lower taxes. Meanwhile Ireland now has $13B to throw at Apple somehow to convince them to stay.

> The process continues until the scheme is convoluted enough to satisfy the court

That works both ways. The courts can act as well by simply punishing even more convoluted schemes with larger and larger fines.

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

#702

Post by [deleted] »

throw310822 wrote: post #396
hirako2000 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be unfair if the term was fair to begin with, but it wasn't, according to that court. What would be interesting is to see Apple revealing the cost of its lobbying, to claim a claw back. It won't. It turned out great for Ireland yes, it is odd the court didn't fine that country for offering illegal tax terms.

I think that the court ruled that it was unfair to other countries , not to Ireland. Ireland gained from the deal, didn't lose anything.

[deleted]

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

#703

Post by bdjsiqoocwk »

It seems the zeitgeist has changed. When I first started using HN 5+ years ago, whenever you'd see a similar new, Americans and jump in and claim that this is just the lazy Europeans extorting the poor American companies. The reaction is very different these days.

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

#704

Post by the_optimist »

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

Spoken like someone who has never taken 300-500 level econ.

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

#705

Post by BlackFly »

toyg wrote: post #514
BlackFly wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Ireland did wrong by insinuating to Apple that they could have special treatment when in fact EU law prohibits it, but Apple failed to pay the prevailing tax rates which can be demanded long after the fact. Ireland has sovereign immunity from tort in this case. They could legislate to waive their immunity for tax assurances which would create an interesting constitutional issue in the EU.

EU law supercedes national law. Ireland can legislate as much as they want, but if they ignore ECJ judgements stating that their laws are incompatible with EU legislation, they will be fined.

Yes, potentially, but my understanding by following this case and others is that the EU has no legislation on taxes other than non-discrimination. So there is no EU law to supercede Irish law.

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

#706

Post by RickarySanchez »

jajko wrote: post #62
RickarySanchez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the purpose of a country is to maximize the opportunity of its citizens which is exactly what Ireland is doing. They're not trying to maximize tax income otherwise they would have a higher rate

Ireland is part of much bigger bloc, and milking it hard since Apple couldn't care less about some irrelevant tiny island nation. The only interesting part of it, it can 'hack' into EU via dodgy tax deals that circumvent EU policies. Not 100% sure if its illegal, but its highly amoral, no questions there. Here in Europe we don't like that, money is not above else, greed is not good. The view on this topic boils down…

Absolute nonsense. The Netherlands does the same stuff and calling Ireland an irrelevant nation is an incredibly ignorant statement to label a country that vastly punches above its weight in science, technology, and research.

Here in Europe competition is good and you have some countries that don't like losing out.

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

#707

Post by martinald »

b112 wrote: post #569
martinald wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ro…

Which country spends 50% of tax income on interest payments? UK spends 8.4% (which is much higher than it used to be because of higher interest rates at the moment - was historically half that).

The US fed government is at ~20% from a quick google, which again is much higher because of interest rates (which again are to come down). Canada spends 10%

Where are you getting this 50% from? For comparison, Walmart spent $550m or so on net interest in their last quarter - out of $8bn operating income, so not a huge difference in the private sector.

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

#708

Post by pas »

b112 wrote: post #691
pas wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demonstrated over and over can you elaborate on this please? capital has upkeep costs, yes, but it seems trivial to look up infrastructure spending, debt service costs, GDP, tax burden, for various tax jurisdictions. these things are pretty well studied. taxes do go down.

When I look at my federal and provincial government, I see 50% or more being spent on interest only payments. I've seen that number fluctuate a bit, but it's always been between 30% and 50%, if not higher at times. When you look at the US fed, you see the same sort of thing. That's demonstrated, therefore, over and over. I'll put it another way. If Canadian federal and provincial governments weren't paying 1/2 their…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F7H8wy4WAAAJRRV.jpg

it went down to 6-8 percent in 2016

it was not higher than 20 for a long time

you don't have to convince me that governments are doing dumb shit, but it's not because of debt. it makes sense to borrow when it's cheap. especially for a state. (because when it's cheap it means inflation is low anyway. and arguably when it's too cheap it's imperative for the state to stimulate the economy.)

a lot of things should be "illegal", but since voters don't care legislatures don't either. :/

the obvious problem is the ROI on that debt. (hence the usual opposition to financing rich folks' tax cuts with debt, or subsidizing projects that are not sustainable financially, giving money to wasteful municipalities, etc.)

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