If Ireland shouldn't have done that, that's not Apple. It really seems like a case of "the law should have been", which seems to work in Europe.
It's not like someone's going to declare war on Ireland and conquer them to force compliance the way a citizen breaking the law might be conquered by a police force.
The winning move for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is tit-for-tat.
Enforcement mechanisms lead actors to behave more cooperatively, and everyone knows everyone is better off if everyone is cooperating.
public servants don’t know their laws better than private lawyers do, one of the beauties of using lawyers is that the public servants don’t know which legal rationale you are using and have no way to find out except in the court.
this is often a deterrent for them to bother, because they know they can be wrong or completely blindsided by a mixture of laws they never considered.
in this case, it wasn't a deterrent and we will find out.
but just because a tax authority disagrees doesnt mean the defendant was not compliant according to the law. it means the calculators are different and everyone has to figure out why.
Yes, I read it, including the bit that said the Irish government told Apple their tax affairs were legal.
Apple paid taxes according to the laws that Ireland had at the time. The issue is not that Apple did not pay taxes according to the law, it’s that the laws themselves were incompatible with Ireland’s other obligations.
The TFEU/Lisbon Treaty is law in Ireland and the allegation is that the deal between Apple and the Government was in breach of Article 107, which regulates State Aid.
The ultimate arbiter of whether the deal was lawful is the CJEU. Until decided there, it is uncertain whether Apple acted lawfully.
> The issue is not that Apple did not pay taxes according to the law, it’s that the laws themselves were incompatible with Ireland’s other obligations.
This just fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between member states and the EU. The EU Treaties and subsequent Regulations (although not Directives, which must be transposed into law nationally) are actually laws across the bloc. Not foreign treaties, not state obligations, but actual laws. Furthermore they take precedence over national laws and can be enforced by the bloc at a judicial level.
In addition, whether the Government of the day gave assurances of lawfulness or not, all large enterprises know that only the courts can actually decide whether a deal is lawful or not. This is the same in most democracies, including the US.
A number of governments seem to disagree with that interpretation.
Trying to fix this via fiscal union leads to more brexits