The demand was that Apple pay €13B in back taxes.
> it should have been blindingly obvious
and yet, it took a deep-dive investigation by the commission with a team of specialists to untangle it.
> it should have been blindingly obvious
and yet, it took a deep-dive investigation by the commission with a team of specialists to untangle it.
And blindingly obvious to Apple, the benefactor.
When somebody says, "Hey come and do your stuff here, we'll only charge you 0.005% corp tax!" you should expect that their wider financial governing body (who is losing out severely because of a deal like that) might have something to say about it.
You saw that thing in the ICIJ Jersey papers leak where Apple went round the world actively seeking jurisdictions that would twist their tax rules to suit them?
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-cash-mountain-ho...
I'm saying that when you get a deal this good —however you ended up there— you should not be surprised when it turns out that it was illegal.
Of course Apple shopped around. But if somebody offered to sell you $20 bills for half a cent each, would you suspect something dodgy? That's the scale of the issue here.
This is just a drop in the ocean for the total amount of wealth that is protected with these schemes. In the $20 for ¢0.5 picture this probably amounts to ¢50. They're still making off with the other $19.49. Though arbitration would probably round that up.
An acceptable loss.
It's bleedingly obvious that it's illegal to be taxed differently than other companies. Paying back €13bn is nothing.
Companies that "make deals" on tax anywhere in the world should be effectively banned from the EU market. It's pure evil. Or pay 10x of any gain they have made anywhere in the world by "making deals" on tax, thereby undercutting fair competition in a free market.
But saying "hey, that's obviously corruption" isn't enough. We need a good way to restructure tax collection so that the right people get it.
Multinationals paying Luxembourg (Paypal, eBay) or Ireland (Apple, Amazon) for all revenue and operations from the entire EU is wrong, no? How do you fix that?
The particular problem with the EU is that it's a system of "good faith" agreements that has until quite recently been quite weak against cynical attacks.
This kind of dealing undermines the spirit of the EU accords and you can expect it to be dealt with in the course of time - probably through tax harmonisation, which wouldn't then be a million miles away from the american model.
You are not supposed to be able to get special privileges to your company to the detriment of your competitors.
There can be no free market when justice (and thus taxation) is not blind.
Capitalism is a perfectly good system of economics and I look forward to seeing it in place some day.
"The Irish government agreed a deal with Apple in 1991 to only tax a certain bracket of its earnings" http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-apple-managed-to-get-its-t...
To me it's pretty obvious that Tim Cook will burn in hell :-).
Though tax avoidance was a corporate strategy and they actually sought these deals it would not have been obvious that this was technically illegal. The Irish Revenue Commissioners told them it was legal as an interpretation of Irish law, which was incorrect.