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Comment by runesoerensen | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that this decision was made by the European Commission, and that this is not merely a tax matter -- the tax discounts seems to just have been the way Ireland has illegally provided state aid.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules. 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. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014."

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm

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If Apple paid $400 million in tax in Ireland, and this was an effective tax rate of 0.005%, then that implies that Apple's profit was 8 trillion dollars.

Something doesn't add up.

> Something doesn't add up.

It'd be great if people could be less vague about their opinions, and a lot more specific if they believe the EC is making a mistake - the EU isn't perfect, but please don't discount it on a superficial hunch (which unfortunately seems to happen a lot these days).

From the press release I referenced:

Therefore, only a small percentage of Apple Sales International's profits were taxed in Ireland, and the rest was taxed nowhere. In 2011, for example (according to figures released at US Senate public hearings), Apple Sales International recorded profits of US$ 22 billion (c.a. €16 billion[1]) but under the terms of the tax ruling only around €50 million were considered taxable in Ireland, leaving €15.95 billion of profits untaxed. As a result, Apple Sales International paid less than €10 million of corporate tax in Ireland in 2011 – an effective tax rate of about 0.05% on its overall annual profits. 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.

So Tim Cook was lying when he said Apple paid $400 million?

He said he did that in 2014, not 2011. Apple might well have paid $400 million in 2014, and that might well be 12.5% of the profit that Ireland says corporation tax is owed on.

But, there are billions of Euros of profit that, according to Ireland, no tax needs to be paid on. Being able to choose not to pay corporation tax on 99%+ of your profits isn't an option available to most companies operating in Ireland.

Thing is, tax loopholes are usually due to a confluence of interacting incentives.

For example, governments often want to encourage innovation. That can mean giving tax breaks to income from IP. It can also mean creating a loophole if you structure the company such that profits get directed towards a holder of the IP.

IMO it's ok for governments to use tax policy to encourage some things and discourage others. Not all companies will be able to take advantage of such policies, by their very nature; some companies do less of the desireable things, others more. So I don't see this as a black and white issue.

One thing for sure, it's definitely an encroachment on Ireland's sovereignty with respect to tax. I don't expect the judgement to stand as is on appeal. If it does, the EU will risk further fracture. If the biggest countries in the EU use EU policy to attack smaller countries' tax policies, the club will start looking less appealing by the day.

(Disclaimers: I am Irish, living in London, not a fan of Brexit, etc.)

I think the EC is making a strategic mistake, a policy mistake, and it's a threat to the continued existence of the EU. I don't expect the decision to stay as is on appeal.

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