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Comment by anamoulous | Hacker News Reader

The nullification of a member state's unfair tax law seems fine, but the retroactive application of the new/old tax law seems odd to me. How long were the EU getting their hackles up about Apple in the years preceding this charge (a citation would be nice)?

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Theere is no nullification of any tax law and there is no retroactivity in this case

And, like in all the other case about ilegal state aids, the EU can go back 10 years since the start of the investigation

The problem, to me, lies in the fact that a multinational company gets punished because a member state fucked up. How is that fair to the company?

Say I'm a balling billionaire, wanting to invest, and politicians in an EU country are willing to attract me by giving me a very generous tax break. There is no reason to say no. However, in this particular case, if ruled that this is state aid, a country gets rewarded with additional tax revenue for doing a bad job / acting like an amateur. They need to find a different punishment mechanism, because in its current state this just incentives countries to introduce half assed laws and systems.

I'm quite sure Ireland didn't give the tax break to Apple without asking. If they asked they should have known that even asking for it is illegal in EU (and has been for a long time now). Or they are just plain stupid for having incompetent people deciding how their money flows.

No, a company is not being punished. What the ruling does is fixing an ilegal advantage given to a company

So it's the responsibility of a company to make sure then that laws are properly made / voted / etc? Where does this end? Why exactly do we still need politicians then?

Second, while such a ruling does indeed fix the situation, there are usually plenty of alternative ways of structuring a transaction to achieve a similar tax rate. Why would I ever bother making a deal with a country that has "screwed" investors over in the past?

Because you should know better? These kind of deals are totally shady anyway and some alarms should go off in your head.

Claiming ignorance just makes you look stupid.

Then you don't know too many wealthy people. :) There are plenty that manage to achieve very, very low total tax rates. (i.e. <5%)

And they presumably know they're taking a risk, depending on exactly what strategies they're doing to do that, and where the income originates.

People who get too clever with that sort of thing are why there are Federal prisons with golf courses.

Not really. We're talking avoidance, not evasion. But that's me speaking, from an EU perspective. If you don't break any laws, there's no way you'll end up in jail. Maybe it's different in the US.

That's the point -- one way to commit tax evasion is to get a little bit too creative with your tax avoidance.

> The nullification of a member state's unfair tax law seems fine

Given the climate around Brexit and the fact that Ireland is fighting back on this ruling with Apple, it is astounding to me that you think this is "fine".

Courts generally aren't concerned with the political "climate" when interpreting the law.

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