A Message to the Apple Community in Europe
apple.com
apple.com
People commenting on a case involving international tax law and how it applies to a mega corporation: "I got this - I'm gonna tell everyone else what the fair and legal result of this case should be"
OTOH, I'm getting a bit tired of these PR pieces that pretend that their company is all about uplifting communities and helping people. I've got nothing against free-market capitalism -- it seems to be working out more or less OK compared to some other economic systems we've tried -- but it seems pointless to have to always pretend that you're not playing the game in order to make profits. A "yes, this was a loophole that we found that allowed us to not pay much tax, but that doesn't give anyone the right to close it retrospectively, and we'll be seeing the EU in court" would have been a nicer statement to read from them.
If they had a real interest in the community, what would be really nice to see is companies trying to contribuite to improving this laws rather than trying to find loopholes that then need to be patched with what are more "hacks" than proper solutions.
Instead here we see Apple trying to justify themselves with some bs PR. Pretty sad but quite in line with what I would have expected of them.
Sure, it's R&D is in California. But R&D is only 7% of its expenditure. The other 93% is necessary to bring in the revenue, so it very much part of the value.
This is a country where, in the 70s & 80s, finding a job meant moving to the UK. Now, pretty much everyone I know works for one multinational or another. And the multinationals all came here for the same reason.
* Can we expect mega corps to go "Hey, this loophole would allow me to only pay 50 euro in tax completely legally, but I think I'll pass on it this time"? In a profit based economy, it's expected that people will try to maximize their profits/minimize the tax that they pay within a certain framework. If Apple did nothing illegal, then it's kind of hard to say that they did something immoral. Or at least it's complicated.
* If we're ignoring legalities and only talking about what we like and what seems 'fair' to us then yes, Apple has a dirty history of using Eastern child labour, etc. But at this point, it's also ethically complicated about whether it's worse for Apple to have these few billion dollars of if they should go towards EU coffers to finance the bombing of the Middle East, etc.
I'm not advocating a pro or anti Apple stance here -- but I think most people in this thread are oversimplifying the case to the point of error, hence my original remark.
From the EU press release:
[Ireland] endorsed a split of the profits for tax purposes in Ireland: Under
the agreed method, most profits were internally allocated away from Ireland
to a "head office" within Apple Sales International. This "head office" was
not based in any country and did not have any employees or own premises.
[...]
The remaining vast majority of profits were allocated to the "head office",
where they remained untaxed [...] an effective tax rate of about 0.05% on
its overall annual profits.
And has been used by many multinationals e.g. Google, Facebook, Ikea, Coke for many years.
I gather that European tax law prosecution must differ from other kinds, because if me and five of my buddies did a crime we'd all be in trouble simultaneously.
To bring this back to topic: Litigation one example to establish a known interpretation of the law and then going after similiar cases (which are then decided on a low level based on the work in another case already done) is absolutely common in Germany.
Courts don't want to flip-flop on very similiar cases with no reason - in fact they are not allowed to by the constitution.
In both systems, periodic codification of the body of private law is made by the judiciary, executive and legislative branches working together at regular intervals with a goal of producing a nearly complete set of relevant rules for dealing with lawsuits between private persons.
The contrast is most keenly seen in landlord-tenant law, which in France is fully codified in a single document, while there are many Acts of Parliament and case law that apply in England and Wales.
In the French and German systems, matters that cannot be fully decided by reference to the relevant codified law are dealt with by the court of first instance writing down a decision with logic similar to that done in county courts in the UK. The parties generally have an automatic right of appeal from the court of first instance to a court that behaves very similarly to either the High Court in England or the Court of Appeal for England and Wales when it hears evidence sua sponte. The rulings of these appellate courts will almost always form the basis for a revision of the relevant code, and in the interim the appellate courts will generally reverse any ruling by a court of first instance that conflicts.
Codification also happens in public law, both administrative law and criminal law. Many common-law countries other than England and Wales -- most notably Canada and the United States (federally, and in several of the states) have a criminal code that is amended and revised from time to time. The German system of codification in criminal law also incorporates points of what in the U.S. would be doctrinal (i.e., wholly maintained by the judiciary) directly into the code, so that most criminal cases do not have to make reference to any other document even where there are controversies over the behaviour of the police or other authorities.
Precedent -- not precedence -- therefore differs mainly in the use of extra-statutory material in courts of first instance.
Note that in this particular case, European Administrative and Procedural Law (and particularly with respect to member-states' compliance with the Treaty of the European Union) is the relevant system, and while it strives to codify after the fact, typically a Directorate-General of the European Commission holds quasi-judicial hearings and writes down a detailed analysis and order in a process that in English Law would be considered secondary or delegated legislation, or something very very roughly similar to an Executive Order of a form explicitly allowed by an Act of Congress (one might compare decisions of e.g. the FCC). These orders are reviewable by the Commission as a whole, and in principle references may be made to the Council on an ad hoc basis. Parties subjected to adverse orders have a right to go to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on various grounds, and there is an appeals process within the CJEU.
This system stems from (among others) Articles 41 and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 298 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
With respect to precedent under this system, in general if an administrative decision by the Commission is not appealed or is not overturned on appeal, it remains part of secondary law until and unless the CJEU or the legislature (both parts, the European Parliament and the European Council) changes it. That means that Commission decisions that elucidate a general principle is binding on future Commission decisions. I can't imagine what to call that other than binding precedent.
Probably not if you are not part of the same crime. If you and your five buddies commit a crime together, you'd be in trouble simultaneously. If you all commit a crime individually, you are not.
It's not like all thefts in a country are in trouble simultaneously, just because everyone committed their individual crime at the same time.
Of course not. In white-collar and corporate crime, they pick the cases they want to pursue. It doesn't matter if it's "fair" to you that everybody else isn't getting investigated.
Apple is not the first case, it is just more mediatic and has a bigger sum
"Apple Sales International supplies and distributes Apple products. Apple Sales International was formerly known as Apple Computer International. The company is based in Hollyhill, Ireland. Apple Sales International operates as a subsidiary of Apple Inc."
It relies on the fact that Irish tax law does not include transfer
pricing rules. Specifically, Ireland has territorial taxation, and
does not levy taxes on income booked in subsidiaries of Irish
companies that are outside the state.
It's also worth noting that Ireland has passed tax reform to render this not possible any more.
[...] In subsequent years, Apple Sales International's recorded profits continued to increase but the profits considered taxable in Ireland under the terms of the tax ruling did not. Thus this effective tax rate decreased further to only 0.005% in 2014.
Given the leviathan tax systems out there, it's no wonder tax havens exist in the first place. Before judging this activity as unethical and shifting the tax avoidance to some other place though, governments really need to perform a cost-benefit analysis of their tax laws and make it clear to companies what's expected from them in return for access to their market.
> ASI, formerly Apple Computer International and originally Apple Computer Accessories Ltd., is a 100% subsidiary of AOE. ASI is an Irish-incorporated non-resident company that is carrying on a trade through a branch in Ireland
I'm starting to understand how vital unions were for being a lobbyist to the gov. That spoke from the people's perspective. There is a lot that I dislike about unions but their voice representing the people is missed.
How can I do it?
In the end, this matter is a very complex legal question (1. were the Irish tax deals actually "deals" or just the day-to-day application of the Irish tax code?; 2. if they were "deals", were they illegal deals under EU rules against state support?). It is going to be answered by the European Court, which I guess (or at least hope) will not make its decision based on an "open letter" posted on the Internet.
They managed to find ways to evade taxes. Which I can stomach. But writing such a letter and expecting sympathy? Yeah right. Good luck with that.
Imagine the headlines comparing how much an average person pays on taxes with Apple.
The other camp will indeed slam EU for butting in (again).
It will mostly depend on the news outlet's agenda.
Of course it could also back fire with the EU (particularly Germany) playing hard ball with both Ireland and the Brexit negotiations simultaneously and any negative effects on the UK economy scaring Ireland into compliance.
That said this is a very cynical ploy by Apple.
Then why on earth would Apple think Ireland will side with them rather than the EU? If anything, the EU holds all the cards here since Ireland will have to negotiate with the EU post-Brexit, and who knows if Apple taxes will be a bargaining chip?
"This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters"
Maybe this doesn't look _that_ serious to non-EU citizens but given what's happening in Europe in general (nationalist parties on the rise, etc.), I'd be very careful with this approach.
The EU was never meant to control member state's tax policies. That's exactly what they are now trying to do. Regardless of whether you feel they're justified or not, Apple's point is sound: it is a loss of sovereignty.
> A company’s profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created. Apple, Ireland and the United States all agree on this principle.
is patently false given the Double Dutch Irish Sandwich structure of Apple tax reporting. This is not a coy avoidance the truth, this is a blatant lie.
No response, short of a link to an album of photos from the large and gleaming worldwide R&D centre that Apple presumably operates in Curaçao is acceptable.
I have seen a team of engineers, all trained for free by a French university, have a meeting, in French, with senior executive of a French group (from the same university) about a software tool they wanted to implement; the suggestion that came out was based on algorithms developed by engineers and scientists working within a joint program between a large state-owned industrial group and French universities.
I would add that said alumni all were generously paid during their study, but that would identify the university. Not the program, or the algorithm, though. And that’s the rub: it happens all the time.
Added value to GAFA: billions. Money that the French government put into the program: dozens of million directly; billions if you include maintaining generations of engineers up to date. Money that the French government is going to get from that: zilch.
And all the engineers, senior of not, are very proud to have benefited from those program. This is their identity, literally: they introduce themselves using the common formula First name, Last name, University, Graduation year.
To have those executive remain silent internally is sickening.
If these users decide that the Apple has lost its sheen, once they refrain from buying mobile phone cases with holes cut in them to show the branding, Apple will quickly find out they are essentially no different from companies like HP or Dell. Their profits will start resembling those of the rest of the industry, their stock price will sink to something resembling their P/E ratio and they will have to compete on a more level playing field.
This is why this letter somewhat puzzles me. They were caught using a tax avoidance scheme, clear and simple. They try to talk their way out if this but fail to show anything that would legitimize their actions. This does not sit well with European Apple users and as such it has the potential to damage Apple's reputation - and with that its value - in this market. They stand to lose more than they gained by avoiding those taxes in the first place.
Except it's not. Apple paid all the tax Ireland asked for. The problem is the EU are saying Ireland should have different tax laws and therefore Apple should now pay Ireland retrospective taxes based on what the UN thinks Ireland's tax law should have been in the past.
The problem with that should be mind-numbingly self-evident.
2. My understanding is that Ireland's tax laws should meet a certain EU standard. Apple was meeting Ireland's laws but Ireland was not meeting the EU's and thus Apple wasn't paying the correct amount of tax. So the laws have always been in place, they just weren't being followed correctly by Ireland or by Apple.
2. That sounds like fault lies with Ireland, not Apple. Or perhaps with the EU for failing to enforce their own damn rules.
This decision is the EU enforcing the laws though. And I think the fault does lie with Ireland - but nobody is saying the fault lies with Apple. That's why they're not being fined. They're just being told to pay money they have always owed, money which was never theirs. I can see it from both sides though. Why should Apple be 'punished' if they were told they were paying the right amount? On the other hand if my accountant screws up my taxes and I pay too little I have to pay it back eventually.
...to an entity that repeatedly insists they're not owed it.
The idea that state aid laws are relevant to corporation tax levels is a relatively recent phenomenon in the EU which is why these tax setups date back decades and it's only now that the EU has suddenly "discovered" that they're illegal.
The laws have not always been in place and not being followed. Rather, an extremely vague set of EU powers is now being stretched past the limit in order to enforce EU policy of the day.
Judging from what you're saying though the law has always been in place and no new law has been created to enforce this decision - it's just an old law being interpreted to cover this scenario. Is that correct?
But nobody is arguing that Apple is weak and needs to be protected from foreign competition in this case. Apple is the foreign competition. And Ireland isn't paying them money to keep them afloat. So this is a very different sort of situation to what state aid rules were designed for, and that's why the EU is using such a tortured definition of "aid". The Commission has wanted to control and harmonise member state tax policies for a long time but know governments would never let them when asked directly. So they are finding ways to bend old powers to their latest needs.
Thanks for the info!
No, the EC is not saying anything about the tax laws of Ireland
So is R&D the only part of the company they believe creates any value? Why operate in Ireland at all if so? Should just outsource it all...
Of course they know better. The value is right there in the first paragraph:
"Thirty-six years ago, long before introducing iPhone, iPod or even the Mac, Steve Jobs established Apple’s first operations in Europe. At the time, the company knew that in order to serve customers in Europe, it would need a base there."
If only R&D created taxable value, there would be no need to tax anyone after the research stage. Of course that's not the case (and it's actually the opposite of what you want, as a society). This is a very weak argument; if that's all they have, they're going to lose any appeal.
You shift profits to avoid tax, don't play coy.
The era of tax being optional for multinationals is drawing to a close. You make your profit, you pay for access to the market, no exceptions.
Imagine for a moment that your own government raised your personal tax rate and said that since they felt the previous tax rate was too low, you also owe taxes from the past.
"The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years."
A lot of Europeans (me included) are not at all happy to see massively profitable companies operating in Europe without paying practically any taxes. This makes it impossible for European companies to compete with them and I'm very glad the authorities are looking to level the playing field and bring in some tax revenue while doing so.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/sto...
what is different about this?
I have doubts that these MNCs help the society that much to be eligible for these tax breaks. They are not charities... The loss for the EU as a economic partner is negligible.
The "smaller" economies have to give incentive to large corporations so they could set up shop. Ireland did it with various incentives, Poland, Estonia and the likes are also doing it with others.
Ireland is in the Eurozone so they can't set up their own monetary policy so they can't offer much in terms of favorable interest and conversion rates to large corporations.
If they can't offer tax incentives companies would be less inclined to set up shop in Ireland if their operating costs would be similar to those in Germany or France. English gives Ireland some advantage but it's not nearly as big as people think, the culture in Germany or France is close enough and you can train people to speak English and with the shared market even import a few 1000's Irish to man the phones.
Apple and the other big guys set up their shop in Ireland because the Irish government gave out huge incentive both direct and indirect it provided funding for training and education for its residents to meet the specific requirements that companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook had. It provided financing, loans and tax breaks to those companies to come in and employ Irish workers and it did it because it's the only way it could compete with the likes of Germany.
Tax loopholes are bad, laws that prevent smaller countries from being competitive are even worse, an equal playing field works when the players are equal, when they aren't "equality" is only advantageous to the strong and established players.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30844962
[2] http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cf...
[3] http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cf...
EDIT: Formatting
The two are vastly different, and the first is tolerated only by the latter because it's the best way we know to bring order and organization to trade.
The people paying for your product are able to buy it because they live in a country that provides for them, through added value, jobs, health care, infrastructure and so on. If you want to profit from these people's buying power, then you have to conform to that country's rules of business, that's all.
Apple is very happy to make huge sells of iPhones thoughout France, Germany, Italy and such countries, siphoning money from their people to Ireland, without ever contributing as much into the local economy. They employ a few hundred people in Apple stores and hotlines, but compared to their profit it is just ridiculous.
"people paying for your product are able to buy it because they live in a country that provides for them": wow... really? I know governments love considering people's money as theirs, people's lives as theirs, but that's a bit far stretched maybe? I'm not any country's liability. I'm a free man in a free society. Aren't you?
Here's a business producing commerce-enabling technology in an extremely valuable manner, hence the profit. Consumers exchanged their earned, post-tax savings for those things and paid additional tax along the way. To act like governments were short-changed is preposterous. It's "you didn't build that" taken to the extreme, and borderline extortion.
Apple subsidiaries in random countries selling phones don't pay taxes because they don't make any profit. They don't make any profit because they're "charged" an amount for the phones (and IP, branding etc) that exactly equals the sales.
This is not about tax competition, this is about abusing tax loop holes and trying to avoid paying any tax at all. E.g. before 2015 Amazon declared their entire European income in Luxembourg and payed about 1 percent of tax on that money. This way other (much bigger) European countries like Germany and France lost billions.
In the European union, where funds are easily transferred between subsidiaries in different countries, tax competition by individual member states can have particularly harmful effects on the public economy as a whole.
In a typical multinational corp tax avoidance scheme, a coproration has a subsidiary A in e.g. Ireland and has a very small corporate tax rate on profits. Then another country, e.g. Netherlands gives subsidiary B a tax break on some commodity, typically an IP licensing scheme of some kind.
Subsidiary A licenses some IP from B, and the licensing fees are conveninently 100% of the profits of A, so they're not making a profit in Ireland and don't have to pay tax there. Subsidiary B gets all their profits from IP licensing that pays hardly any tax in the Netherlands.
Add a few subsiriaries and loan arrangements between them (free movement of capital in Europe is one of the fundamental pillars of the EU), and no taxes get paid and all of the profits get funneled into a tax haven such as Bahamas or Caymans.
So while you'd think that tax competition would just be a fair competition when talking about individual countries, at EU scale it ends up being a race to the bottom where a few select countries (Ireland, Netherlands, Luxemburg) get a nominal fee from the multinationals but all European states end up losing billions in tax revenue.
And then there's also the corruption aspect. These tax deals aren't a gesture of goodwill.
(The US avoids much inter-state tax competition through federal taxes)
In the past?
This is ongoing - enabled by Junker himself ...
No, it is not. Before 2015 many companies (one prominent example being Amazon) declared their entire European income in Luxembourg and payed about 1 percent tax on that money. This tax loop hole has since been closed by the EU, Luxembourg lost about 10 percent of its budget because of this. Today when somebody from e.g. Germany buys a product from Amazon.de, Amazon pays tax in Germany for this product.
Luxembourg is like the delaware of Europe, it's a banking and financial institution state and both its own laws and the EU laws and policies it lobbies (and when you effectively are not only Delaware but also the DC of the EU it kinda helps) for ensure that it would continue to operate as one.
The bad thing that Ireland and is a big no-no in the EU is to go to the likes of apple and say:
Hai Apple I really want you inside of me! I know I'm small, and I don't have a huge workforce and internal market, I'm not like Germany. I also don't have a huge economic and financial infrastructure like Luxembourg, Switzerland or UK (London) but I'm a really hard worker! Tell me what skills you need, and I'll educate my people, I'll give you low interest loans to build your shiny offices and I will give you tax deduction if you employ my peeps. I would do all that I can to make sure it will be easy for you to operate here because I really don't have much to offer and I need to compete with the bigger countries since the euro is expensive and the price stability is managed by the ECB and my people need to eat and loans I've been taking on are becoming harder and harder to pay.
Now this is the only way that Ireland can really attract large corporations and make it more lucrative to invest in its industry, this is what effectively every country on the planet does when it wants to grow. And since Ireland can't control it's own monetary policy and currency it also can't just be a cheap place to be, while there is some local variation because of the mandate of the ECB to control the price stability within the Eurozone the prices of many goods and services are quite similar (Ireland is actually more expensive than Germany because it's an island which increases the costs of logistics and it has lower production which means more imports which add costs even if they import within the EU) it needs boost its economy in order to match the salary level of the other Eurozone states and to do it it needs to offer something to corporations.
It can't offer them a huge workforce because it doesn't have one, It can't offer them access to financial and banking infrastructure because it doesn't have that either, what it can offer is English, fund both academic and vocational education and training based on the skills those companies need and give them tax incentives to come and employ Irish people. Ireland isn't Luxembourg Apple didn't set up effectively a "shell" there that's pretty much there for easy tax loopholes and actually employes no one, Apple employees directly over 6000 people in Ireland and indirectly 4-5K more, same goes for Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon and the likes. This isn't some tax break Island that those companies incorporate in by name only and don't actually have staff, companies have "real" employees in Ireland because the Irish "incentives" are tied to direct employment. Ireland isn't trying to create tax loopholes to make a quick buck to split it between a few 100's residents, it tries to keep it's 5M people employed, forcing them to play by the "same rules" as 4 of the world's 10 largest economies is asinine.
But most taxes in the US are Federal.
In Europe they are effectively 'state level' - making the problem worse for Europe than for state-by-state tax competition in the US.
Re: your Ireland comment - yes - I see your point, but the issue here is not Ireland having a 'lower tax rate' of 12.5% - rather than they allowed Apple to have 'special privileges' thereby paying next to nothing, right?
Are you sure about that?
It's going to depend very much on where you are, how you're organized, what tax breaks you get, and how much money you make, but states generally have both a) many different kinds of tax: income tax, property tax, sales tax and b) a cumulative higher tax rate. A much higher proportion of my money personally goes to the state than it does to the feds.
For for example you might have:
State A: State income tax: 5% Property tax: 5% Sales tax: 5%
State B: State income tax: 6% Property tax: 6% Sales tax: 5%
Yes, everyone in both State A and B pay, let's say, a federal 7% income tax and payroll taxes. But the state taxes make a huge difference. State says to Wal-Corp - build a store here and you'll be exempt from property taxes and sales tax for 5 years, and we'll give you a special state income tax credit that reduces it to 3%. That's the kind of deal making we have going on with states, except the federal government doesn't intervene to stop it like the EU did here.
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/brandywine-to-broad...
> Since June 2013, the Commission has been investigating the tax ruling practices of Member States. It extended this information inquiry to all Member States in December 2014. In October 2015, the Commission concluded that Luxembourg and the Netherlands had granted selective tax advantages to Fiat and Starbucks, respectively. In January 2016, the Commission concluded that selective tax advantages granted by Belgium to least 35 multinationals, mainly from the EU, under its "excess profit" tax scheme are illegal under EU state aid rules. The Commission also has two ongoing in-depth investigations into concerns that tax rulings may give rise to state aid issues in Luxembourg, as regards Amazon and McDonald's.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3688861/Jean-Claude-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_European_Comm...
From the letter, it seems Apple thinks it should be paying taxes in California rather than were the profits are coming from (the EU). Excepts from the letter: "In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States."
The second half of the sentence seems to be a non-sequitur, or intentional misdirection -nothing about it follows from the first half.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strate...
Right. MNC have, but local companies had no way to do that. That's the crux of the issue. In fact, some people started an inquiry how to replicate that scheme.
Sorry but this is typical American FUD, European companies are scrutinised on the same terms and when breaking the law or dodging stuff are getting (high) fines as well.
It is not Europe's fault that this kind of news doesn't find its way in the US... .
If this tax activity was illegal, why wasn't it stopped 25 years ago, when it started?
It was illegal all the way, only Apple wants to make it legal.
"why wasn't it stopped 25 years ago, when it started?"
If murdering is illegal, why wasn't it stopped 5000 years ago? Don't know. People do illegal things all the time, most people doing illegal things do not get prosecuted for various reasons, fashion, society, not enough prosecutors.
The argument "I was not prosecuted some years, so it was not illegal" doesn't work with any court.
"Statutes of limitations"
I don't know the time frames and for what time frame Apple needs to pay fines. Could you share the time frames where you think Apple got illegally fined?
I'm no expert in tax law but would assume, here in Germany, there is no "Statutes of limitations" for taxes. Countries lose all their humor when it's about taxes.
That's exactly how it works. Look up statute of limitations.
Most civil violations have stringent limits.
> I'm no expert in tax law but would assume, here in Germany, there is no "Statutes of limitations" for taxes. Countries lose all their humor when it's about taxes.
I didn't know German law applied in Ireland. Perhaps that's the entire point of the EU, I don't know.
Anyway, Ireland explicitly says that nothing is owed. Maybe you should read a bit more about this issue before commenting?
Apple innocently, and unknowingly[1], accept an illegal tax benefit. Apple lose the benefit of the illegal activity.
What's the difference? Caveat Emptor for both. Even if you want to consider them the innocent victim they don't get to keep the benefit of a crime.
[1] I'm less convinced it's unknowing here - Apple probably have a surfeit of international taxation experts and lawyers.
Once they pay their 14B in taxes.
lol
Should Tesla be worried that the United States Federal Government might deem Nevada's special tax deal invalid?
Yes, what you said is that ridiculous.
It depends who do you mean with everyone? In this case the only party which should have been asked would have been the EU, which doesn't sound mad at all in my opinion.
If you want to get an opinion from the US Federal Government on how to account for a transaction for tax purposes there is in fact a procedure for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_letter_ruling
One in the business of importing phones from another country who has questions about competing taxation and tariff rules has many options for getting guidance on the implications of their accounting.
And nothing that happened in this matter was shocking or surprising to Apple. They have elaborate tax avoidance schemes. For example, they didn't like trip and fall and land on a convoluted Double Irish arrangement by accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
Hell yes, they better have a plan should that happen.
Want to know how you can tell this didn't happen to Apple innocently and unknowingly? If they were actually innocent and unknowing they'd certainly say so, and make a coherent legal argument to back up that point of view.
The post we're all commenting on has some bullshit black and white pictures and stories about shit that happened in Cork Ireland in 1980 and Steve Jobs feelings and whatnot.
Q.E.D.
Losing the benefit, sure. Paying back taxes that don't exist nor asked for? There's a problem in there somewhere.
they are being forced to buy the car that they won't keep as well.
Following your borrowed car analogy, Apple finds a gas card in the glove box on the first day and uses the car every day for 4 years and uses the gas card. When it's discovered that the borrowed car is stolen and the gas card wasn't Ireland's, who has to pay the gas card off?
Come on, really?
A better analogy would be finding that someone deliberately and knowingly claim mileage expenses at an absurdly high cost per mile in lieu of a larger annual bonus after discussing tax efficient solutions with HR. Would they face a revised tax bill for past years and be expected to stop overclaiming for future years if an authority with more standing than their employer got involved? Of course. Does Apple's team of tax law specialists have more understanding of the potential for such a scheme to be ruled illegal than the average employee? Of course.
Yeah - but this arrangement has been going on for more than 20 years, no?
A little late in the game to be declaring it 'illegal'?
I'm not against the ruling, but it's clear that the EU is messed up.
Make no mistake - the only reason Apple was under investigation is because they were making so much money.
This thing should have been brought up the moment it was implemented.
Also - the EU is structured to incent governments to screw other governments by creating crazy tax schemes.
You know who spearheaded this? Jean-Claude Junker - the same guy who spent 10 years developing tax avoidance schemes for Luxembourg!
You are wrong. From EC statement: Ireland gave ILLEGAL tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13 billion [1]
There was a discussion yesterday about this on HN. It's pretty much a corporations responsibility to try to avoid as much tax legally as it can. In this case, Ireland gave them LEGAL tax break (at least that was what the Irish believed at the time) and now Apple is getting blamed..?
It just doesn't make sense, put the blame where the blame is due.
Ireland will probably not see a penny from it.
The government maintains that even if it were to take the
cash, European rules mean it would have to use the money
to pay down some of its 180 billion euros of national debt
rather than fund spending.
There's certainly some merit to that argument.
> It's pretty much a corporations responsibility to try to avoid as much tax legally as it can.
That's a popular falsehood. It is a corporation's responsibility to fulfill the wishes of its shareholders. That doesn't even necessarily mean maximizing profits, and it certainly doesn't mean avoiding taxes to a degree that incurs both legal and reputational risk. If the shareholders want the company to act as a mature and respectable person would, then the corporation's duty is to do so.
Unless Apple's a benefit corporation, it's only responsiblity to share holders is long and short term profit. I distinguish between the two to make the point that it shouldn't break laws or go out if business because that hurts long term profits, it also should avoid taxes it can, and pay all taxes it can't avoid to maximize short term profits, and minimize longer term tax penalties.
Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 170 N.W. 668, 684 (Mich. 1919)
> A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.
Although, there are examples where a court did recognize that helping employees will maximize profit, or not putting up bright lights next to a neighborhood is "moral". All of the decisions had to relate back to helping the shareholders. Most courts in the U.S. view shareholder profit as the #1 responsibility of the board of directors, others argue public safety might be #1, profits #2.
All of them agree that the primary purpose is to make/maximize profits, without which you can do nothing.
https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiducia...
As far as I understand, the EU is saying that it never was legal under EU law.
That is maybe your legal analysis of european union state aid legislation, but in the end it's the commission and the court of justice who have to assess it.
If you evade tax, you know full well what you are doing, even if it's technically legal you should expect to be retrospectively taxed, especially if you are exploiting the system to such an extreme.
What it looks like they are trying to do is apply a legally compliant level of taxes retroactively, not laws.
(Yeah, I know you're saying it was legal under Irish law, but the whole point is that some Irish laws take precedence over others. In this case, their treaty obligations to the EU, codified in their laws, take precedence. If this wasn't the case there wouldn't even be a court case, much less a judgement.)
There are actually limits to how far back the dodged taxes can be collected. That's why it's only $13bn. That's what has been due since 2003. This entire thing actually goes back since the 1990s.
Also, we're not even talking about criminal charges or fines here. Apple isn't being sued or facing any punishment. The EC has merely ruled that Apple didn't pay all the taxes it legally owed Ireland and Ireland didn't have the authority to allow them not to pay the taxes in the first place.
This is akin to a janitor charged with collecting rent for the landlord telling you for years that it's okay for you to pay pennies to live in your mansion until the landlord finds out about it and now demands you pay the $$$ you owe him because the janitor was never legally in a position to make that kind of deal and you're actually a highly paid expert in rental contracts and were fully aware of the deal having no legal basis to begin with.
This decision can't have been a surprise to Apple. Seeing this kind of thing coming is what they pay very expensive legal experts for. They knew EU law overruled the Irish laws that supposedly allowed this deal in the first place. They're only crying foul because they were caught.
That only applies to new laws.
Oh wait, actually even the people who wrote a system for unchangeable, code-backed legal documents don't believe in the letter of the law.
There's a big difference. The latter is legal, the former is not.
Apple did not do anything wrong from what I can see: they were given a good deal, they took it. It turns out that deal was illegal so they have to pay some money to rectify the error.
Doesn't seem very fair but governments are pretty unforgiving when it comes to taxes overall.
I don't really have a view which is correct, but I think it's important to note that the EU doesn't accept it is acting retrospectively.
IMO they should be able to sue the agency (or agency's employees) that supposedly granted them the tax benefits for damages because they misrepresented the actual tax situation, but they still owe the unpaid taxes and have to pay them back.
Not knowing the law doesn't protect you from breaking it. In this case, they're not even being punished -- the $$ owed aren't a fine, just the taxes (and interest) they should have paid to begin with.
This is similar to buying stolen goods: sure, you may not actually have known they were stolen, so you might not be directly punished, but you still don't legally own the goods (even though you paid for them) so they will be confiscated and returned to their rightful owners. You can sue the seller for damages, but the state is under no obligation to reimburse you for handing over "your property" (because it isn't).
And you're right, it's not a punishment, just asking them to pay what was owed. If you owe the taxman £20000, it's a big problem for you. If you owe the taxman £13,000,000,000, then it's definitely a problem for the taxman :)
He did eventually pay back the entire amount (plus interest) but he was released from prison after having spent only roughly half his sentence (which actually didn't confine him to prison for his entire "stay" anyway).
Yes and no - the EC's argument makes a bit more sense imo: Yes, it was legal in the sense that Apple broke no irish tax laws. But the tax laws themselves have violated some higher-level EU laws that Ireland had pledged to obey - at least that's how the EC sees it.
Perhaps a more fitting (but still horrible) analogy were if you make an employment contract far below mandatory minimum wage. Neither you nor your employer is violating the contract and both of you might be perfectly happy with the conditions - but your contract might stil cause disadvantages to third parties (other workers) and might violate state laws.
No it was clearly not. How did you come up with that?
I didn't say that corporations should be the same tax as individuals. I've said that's unfair for Apple to pay less tax than any other EU corporation/company. How can you compete with Apple if they pay no tax and your start-up pays 20% ? How could Apple have succeeded if they were to pay 20% tax and all the others (i.e. IBM) was to pay no tax?
> What about the notion that corporations should pay no tax at all, and the only taxes should be on individuals.
That would be basically slavery of foreign people(not nice).
Seems like interesting timing. They've decided to go after back taxes right before the UK leaves the party.
Just for your info this isn't what happened, it's Ireland's tax money. The EC doesn't collect taxes. Instead the EC ruled that Ireland was providing illegal state aid (under EU rules) to Apple through its tax arrangements. So this loophole was nullified and Apple have to pay the back taxes to Ireland. The EU gets nothing (the EC is the executive body of the EU).
This investigation into dodgy corporate tax deals has nothing to do with Brexit (note that this is about Ireland, not the UK), and it's been going on for most of a decade now.
No. This isn't over money owed to the EC, it's over state aid perceived as manipulating the Single Market in a company's favour, which is [to an extent] undone by requiring that company to repay the money
> Seems like interesting timing. They've decided to go after back taxes right before the UK leaves the party.
It's the culmination of a three year investigation and legal process, and they've been going after companies with other special tax arrangements with local governments for years. I don't think Brexit had anything to do with it.
Not all law needs to be 100% formalist. It's perfectly possible to have a blanket law that says "If some tax evasion scheme is generally considered to be unfair/unreasonable, it can be annulled no matter what the letter of the law says".
The problem here is that the rule of law and the rule of fairness had diverged, and there was a higher-level law forbidding that. This kind of conflict happens all the time. In the US, the most common manifestation is laws being struck down as unconstitutional. Governments are bound by laws too. When they break those laws by treating people unfairly, correction is needed.
No, it was not legal, this is what the ruling says
Something doesn't jive here. If it is that clear cut, didn't EC read its own laws before asking Apple to pay? If there is a paragraph they skipped someone should point to that, Apple should perhaps.
It would seem to me EC is implying what has happened in the past was not entirely legal somehow. Then it is not obvious what should happen next.
Notice Apple mentions how they "asked govt. of Ireland" for guidance. That means they might have documentation of a govt. official advising it to act that way. That is very important because it is building the case of Ireland here doing something illegal against the EC laws. So Apple is washing their hands here of this case.
Tax judgements often don't occur immediately. Just ask any one of the 50,000 IT contractors in the UK that are facing this exact situation right now with respect to EBT arrangements. Some owe tax dating back over more than a decade.
They knew the risk, they took it, they lost. No-one is naive here, certainly not Apple.
According to Tim Cook/Apple's PR team.
"In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States."
And yet the value creation seems to be happening mostly in tax havens... and NOT in the US. Nice try, Timmy.
Be a sport and put your money where your mouth is, and repatriate all that foreign stash cash to the US, and I am happy to side with you. Yet somehow, I believe this won't be on the menu anytime soon...
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/14/tim-cook-addresses-apples-us-...
"Cook added that it was up to Congress and the president to enact tax reform, which he is "optimistic" will take place sometime next year."
I am actually both scared and biased, you got me!
What I was wondering was if any politician had spoken publicly on this issue. It seems, unsurprisingly, they haven't.
The 0.005% rate is NOT the corporate tax rate Ireland charged Apple, its the rate Apple managed wrangle on all their European wide profits by arranging their corporate structures to take advantage of various loopholes in several countries, not just in Ireland. This was perfectly legal under Irish, EU and importantly, US law at the time. Now the EU wants to effectively rewrite history and even the US agrees with Irelands position on this.
That's not even true! As you say, they keep their profits offshore to avoid US taxes: http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-taxes-offshore-ireland-e...
That's a graph of cash reserves, not revenues. It's highly likely that Apple spends most of the revenue it accrues in the Unites States. You know, on expensive shit like Apple Campus 2.
They had advice at the time that these schemes were legit (though every adviser would deliver that with a wink), any adult human must have known there was a large risk HMRC would disagree eventually (just as Apple knew they were running a risk), and now they face demands to pay the tax they failed to pay in the first place.
Are they the victims? Certainly they will tell you so. Sympathy I have for them? Nil.
" A company’s profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created. ... In Apple’s case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States."
No, I don't think the agreed principle is at all to tax research and development - it is to apply taxes at the point where the transactions take place.
In this case, in Europe. And the European UNION is named that way for a reason; the states have to abide by rules that are designed to protect and enhance the European collective-bargaining position, just as for workers in a labor union. Even so, some states still try to use lax corporate legislation as a competitive edge.
Now they've been caught out.
I'm no fan of retroactive taxation, but there it is - if the tax arrangements are deemed illegal, then the beneficiaries of that are going to be on the hook. Apple's claim that they followed the law may be true to an extent, but the full 'legal tax' situation must obviously include not only the Irish tax rules, but also the European ones, so they appear to have failed in due diligence.
This is bad, bad PR. Maybe let the EU citizens be the judge of that?
IMHO, it is a huge no-no for a company to make a political statement, especially in a troubled time like now (does Apple have any comments on Brexit, too?).
I think this will deeply hurt the fanboyism.
On the continent euro-sceptics operate on the extreme political fringe, they never got into any parliament in numbers and are considered toxic as coalition partners.
The EU won't blow apart, the EU is a fact of life and an economic necessity, Brexit was so shocking because it is indeed unbelievable that anyone would try to quit the EU.
I see a bunch of comments from non-Irish people here saying how badly this letter is going down. But it's aimed at the Irish. Ireland has benefited to the tune of tens of thousands of jobs (perhaps way more) from just a handful of big tech firms, in a country with a population of just 4.5 million. It is one of the things that contributes to the falling Irish unemployment rate.
If the EU starts trying to systematically move big, rich employers out of Ireland (and that's the purpose of these moves, to eliminate Ireland's "unfair" appeal), then there's a risk Irish sentiment will start to turn against the EU, just like it did in the UK over the issue of immigration. If the EU systematically attacks their primary competitive advantage in order to satisfy the high-tax French and high-debt Spanish, then what becomes of Ireland?
Apple's been paying virtually no tax for years because it's argued it's legal to do so. Now the EC deems it was illegal. GG WP - you lose. Time to pay up now.
I'm sure due to the amounts involved that this potential event was in someone's "risks" column and hasn't come completely out of the blue for Apple.
I haven't confined that they have the largest revenues, but paying the most is a weak argument in the face of what the governing body decides as what is a "fair" amount to pay.
Whether or not this decision is fair is another conversation altogether...
Therefore, [citation needed]
When I say virtually no tax, I mean the relationship between the % they pay and the % everyone else pays.
Apple is probably right in saying that the total of VAT, employee tax, etc. is the largest in Ireland, the US and World: they are the largest company in the world, so that statement should be fairly obvious. If someone who makes 1M$ per year pays 0.5% taxes, he still pays more than someone who pay 20% of their 24k$. That’s why this statement is seen as disingenuous: the ratio to your revenue is was matters.
The European Commission, the vast majority of observers and almost all Hacker News members are right in saying that they paid virtually no (0.005%) corporate tax, because that was the point of the statements they made to tax authorities around the world.
On whether what Apple did was legal: the stated that their all their value creation happened in the Dutch Antilles, which is patently false. That is nothing short of lying on your tax form. The Irish government accepted it because they were strong-armed into accepting that or seeing jobs go elsewhere. That type of coercion is also something that this letter lies about.
In the US, John Oliver pretending he is the Head of a Church whose main tenet is his personal enrichment is widely accepted as a legal, and deserving of a tax break; in the EU, such statements are considered disingenuous (that’s the fancy word for “bullshit”) and treated accordingly.
That is incorrect. Apple doesn't pay VAT, they offset any notional VAT bill against the total of VAT collected from customers and pass-through the residue to the revenue agency.
Generally, each such trader in the chain of supply from manufacturer through to retailer charges VAT on his or her sales and is entitled to deduct from this amount the VAT paid on his or her purchases.
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/
The non-corporate end-user is stuck with paying VAT because they're not 'adding value'.
However, I’d be surprised if Apple buys enough things in Ireland to offset the sales of iPhones in Europe.
You seem familiar with the principle of VAT. In reality, many companies who practice tax optimisation scheme are happy to play with that notion beyond recognition.
In Europe, Amazon aligns some of its prices to local prices including VAT, but they only collect Luxembourg VAT, pocketing the difference. The tax accountant of any (international) travel agent would be happy to dazzle you with how much money they are making from creative interpretation of international rules on VAT. If a good is not sold, the last buyer still owe the VAT on it, even when they are not a user of that good, end user or otherwise.
VAT is paid by companies: I’ve had enough issues with my own tax to confirm that you don’t need to collect it to owe it to unscrupulous governments.
Apple do not pay VAT, consumers pay VAT.
You don't also count the PAYE each of Apples employees pay as "tax that Apple pays" do you?
Apple tax lawyers probably do count it, when asked to inflated the number.
http://www.starbucks.co.uk/blog/starbucks-commitment-to-the-...
"we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland, the largest taxpayer in the United States, and the largest taxpayer in the world."
An impressive feat for a company that has around 13% of the smartphone market and 7% of the computer market. Yes they're a big company with lots of revenues, but I find it hard to believe that if Apple was so aggressively dodging tax that they'd still be the world's largest taxpayer.
"the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States"
Is this true? Are a majority of Apple's profits taxed in the United States at normal business tax rates? If so, that would put the flurry of accusations into some degree of proportionality.
"The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals."
"It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been."
Which if this is the case, the UN has a problem with Ireland's laws, not with Apple. This is the first piece of news that has made me wonder if the UK was right to brexit.
I'm not so sure about this bit, but IIRC at this time (and a long time afterwards) Apple wasn't investing much effort in the pretence that Cork was a serious operation, to the extent that the access road to the site wasn't in good repair and hadn't seen attention in ages, possibly since it was built. [EDIT: I am duly corrected on this, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12390072 below.]
Beyond the main Holyhill campus, Apple has a large amount of office space within Cork's city centre.
Additionally, Apple also has a pretty big assembly line there. Many of their products have also been (and still are) assembled there. For many of the PowerPC and earlier Intel machines, if the serial number started "CK", it was assembled in Cork (it's been a while since I've memorized Apple's serial number structure, but they used to be much easier to parse).
However, the area of Cork that Apple's campus is located isn't very affluent and suffers like many inner-city boroughs in Ireland and Europe. Ultimately, the state of the roads isn't Apple's responsibility. You'd hope that a company like Apple could lean on the local government to improve it, but Apple wasn't the company it is today, back in the early 2000s. It was getting there, but it was still coming out of the near-bankrupcy 90s.
Nice logical fallacy here, positively reframing / dumbing down a company's obligation to pay taxes in ${countries_of_activity} as "we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland". That's precisely what Apple is condemned for: for consolidating fiscal activity in a tax haven, Ireland, in order to pay ridiculously-small taxes for Euro zone Apple activity, rather than paying (bigger) taxes in each EU country.
Also, Cook mentions "6,000 people across Ireland [...] performing a wide variety of functions as part of Apple’s global footprint.". I have no idea what that number represents, scaled to a multinational like Apple. I'd be curious to know what you think of this number.
It reads as the Apple Head of State trying to rally the troops, trying the "foreign aggression because they're so jealous" angle.
- We bring work and employ a lot of people so we are good.
- Be careful because if we don't get it our way we are going to go away and you are the one that will suffer.
All EU countries will be subject to the same law, and I doubt they would just stop selling their product on the european market (it would still make them money even when paying normal taxes).
Paying customs tariffs would probably be worse than paying taxes in the EU, too.
Any country that would give them large amounts of tax credits. I'm sure some countries would be willing to negotiate.
> I doubt they would just stop selling their product on the european market (it would still make them money even when paying normal taxes).
They could sell to resellers who would sell in Europe, if it came to that.
You can phrase your post another way - the EU "safeguards" members against making their own decisions and possibly becoming more attractive than the others.
And because the EC is not controlled by any single member state, it can't treat any single nation different from the others.
Tell that to Jean-Claude "it's different because it's France" Juncker!
But, some bondholders are probably the same people who compel American companies with vast cash piles to stash them offshore.
Is this an issue for Irish voters? Their government made a deal that cost them money. If it's OK with the voters, their government can fight the EU on this. Or, if the voters prefer, the Irish government can try to collect from Apple.
After all the posturing is done, they'll probably settle quietly.
Against the FBI it worked because it actually had direct implications for their customers. But in this case there's no implications for their customers other than a vague threat that Apple will punish them (by punishing the EU market) if they have to pay more taxes -- that's not a rallying call, that's blackmail.
The court ordered Apple to pay the penalty of 13 billion euros, plus interest. For the last couple years, many bonds in Europe have been sold at negative interest rates. Does that mean Apple could potentially be paying less than 13B back?
Wow, strong stuff.
This pay-to-play scheme, coupled with other regulations tailored specifically for large corporations, keeps them shielded from upstart competition. The best thing for consumers and business alike would be to slash the taxes and regulations, instead of going after what the companies "owe" the government -- as if a group of bureaucrats in some capital city have any justified prior claim on the fruits of someone else's labor.
Ireland accession to the EU => 1973
I don't think http://curia.europa.eu/ will be very impressed by those arguments
What is retroactive here is the payment of taxes, not the law.
No. The whole agreement between Apple and Ireland was deemed illegal by EC[1], so now they must pay avoided taxes. You can't demand keeping stolen goods after being caught stealing.
That means Apple is due taxes to Ireland.
In a sense, Ireland is the guilty party. They entered the EU; that means they agreed with its rules. Later they made an agreement with Apple that is now ruled illegal in the EU. Yet, they will profit (in the short term) if this ruling will stand.
Note that Apple's only published issue is with the retroactive part.
Open question is whether Apple handled in good faith making that deal. I do not rule out judges would rule they did, because there are zillions of such deals, and because the EU doesn't mention anything about fining Apple (they 'just' have to pay the taxes they are due, with interest)
You pay your army of lawyers avoid that. You want to walk extremely close to the edge, but not drop from it.
The truth is already debatable in the US ('I don't believe the media / government agencies / research from the educated elite'), having corporations jump in to directly muddle the waters doesn't help.
There is an incredible amount of corruption in both areas, and even between them (we call this "crony capitalism"). Both within the government, and within the private sector, corruption can be used to squeeze money out of the general population. Both have necessary roles, and their benefits usually outweigh their level of corruption. But to take the side of one or the other is a rather fruitless exercise.
Instead, effort should be focused on how to improve the laws so that we can make them work well for all parties involved, especially the general population. And sadly, its beyond the level of conspiracy at this point that the people who control the laws are the people who benefit most from them.
Pay.
UE want them to pay more taxes to them because of this wrongful loophole... USA want them to pay more taxes because of this wrongful loophole...
Maybe it's only common sense for Apple to wait that USA and UE define exactly what is actually the lawful taxes process that must replace this no longer existing loophole.
Also the very notion of retroactive "crimes" is usually not compatible with a healthy democracy. How can you be condamned for following instruction a sovereign state (Irland) gave you?
I wonder how many more open letters we'll be seeing in the next few years.
Are you sure this had nothing to do with avoiding US tax and keeping a cash stronghold in Europe?
Europe is in the midst of deciding if it wants to Federalise - and it's unprecedented to do this without war or the expectation of war.
Additionally most countries are in a race to the bottom in collecting MNC taxes.
The two issues are heavily intertwined and this is just the first "battle" that has risen to attention
It's going to be interesting to see what artillery both sides have.
What effect might this have on Apple (and others) repatriating overseas monies back to the US now. If it's going to be taxed overseas anyway, the argument for holding large amounts outside the US seems to be reduced.
Granted, there will still be other non-US tax havens, and I'm guessing the lower rates may still be a factor. But might this have any impact at all? Or will this just be seen as a small fine and companies will carry on as before?
The money is going to Ireland. It is not a fine but back payment of taxes owed.
Looking at it from a 'brexit' perspective it's yet another reason I'm disappointed we left the EU. It's powerful enough to do something about this while our own government can only wrangle £130m out of Google.
Tesla got a sweetheart tax deal from Nevada.
Pfizer got a sweetheart tax deal from the United States.
I don't see the difference.
Down with Apple. They are a drain on society and they deserve everything they're getting right here.
Is the local economy in Cork much better than the rest of Ireland? I tried to search data that supports the Apple’s statement and couldn’t find any.
i.e. don't hate tha playa, hate da game.
Imagine that aliens from a remote galaxy came to Earth to trade. They sell alPads and alPhones. They don't have any papers about how those were created and what kind of costs they paid in their galaxy. It was so long ago no one remembers and why would it matter anyway, maybe alPads and alPhones grow on trees in their world.
Now consider how we would like to tax those. Is VAT enough? If not maybe tax for land where they open their office? Whatever you decide do the same with foreign companies in Europe. It's the only way as digging into costs/deals in other countries which may not even be friendly with EU in the future doesn't make much sense.
Could it still be business as usual?
Also, there are already multiple discussions about the base topic, not sure if another one helps much... (which might be one reason people are flagging)
"The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process."
Please. They got caught not paying any tax in Europe. Ireland's tax laws are not ignored (EU simple asks Ireland to tax Apple according to usual Irish rules) and there is in effect no agreed upon international tax system anymore (if there ever were).
"The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals."
This is irrelevant. There was an understanding that Apple could channel all European profits through Ireland and that the Irish government wouldn't tax them on it.
"We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don't owe them any more than we've already paid."
First of all, it isn't retroactively. The obligation not to receive subsidies was there all the time. Second, it isn't at all unusual. Numerous companies in Europe have had to pay back subsidies, including tax subsidies, to governments that didn't want them back.
"The Commission’s move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications."
If by wide-reaching implications they mean that corporations can't hide behind phony company structures and will have to pay tax, then yes.
"It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been. This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters, and to the principle of certainty of law in Europe."
The EU commission is proposing no such thing. It is merely calling a spade a spade. Ireland joined the EU openly, and signed the EU treaty that bans state aid.
"At its root, the Commission’s case is not about how much Apple pays in taxes. It is about which government collects the money."
As in no government, apparently.
"Taxes for multinational companies are complex, yet a fundamental principle is recognized around the world: A company’s profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created. Apple, Ireland and the United States all agree on this principle."
Yes, it's complex, and much more complex than a company having to be taxed where the value is created. There is no such agreed upon fundamental principle, not even with United States, and even if there were, I would argue that most of the value is created where the products are either produced or sold, not where the R&D department happened to be located or where a company had placed its IPR.
Dear EU,
Please use some of the €13 Billion in taxes to keep art in schools.
Love, Apple.
They begged for clear and fair tax principles for years (up until this letter) and this is happening. It just so happens that if they contradict themselves, or lie, the EU will stop listening.
Look, Apple failed to pay SALES taxes. And now they are trying to mix SALES taxes with the LABOR taxes of those 60 (sixty) people they actually employ in their operation in Ireland.
Apple is the most valuable company in the world, has a huge bank account just sitting there, and yet, they think they shouldn't have to pay taxes.
So instead of selling the products from Europe to Europe, create jobs in the US and sell them from there?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12388601
223 votes in 3 hours and it's half way down page 2?
It's incredibly important news, shouldn't dang et al intervene and reinstate it?