Apple ordered to repay billions of unlawful tax aid by EU

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MikeB4

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#1620077 31-Aug-2016 09:21

joker97:

MikeB4:
old3eyes:

Not an Apple fan but what they are doing is perfectly legal under Irish law. The EU here is just trying to override Irish law and be a big tax collector..

It breaches EU law, Ireland is a member and has made it clear they want to stay so they can't have their cake and eat it.

Apple says it broke nobody's law, how does it breach EU laws?

Of course they did, Apple like any organisation or individual will protest their innocence until the end. As for the laws it's all detailed in the ruling.

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MikeB4

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#1620080 31-Aug-2016 09:23

old3eyes:

joker97:

MikeB4:
old3eyes:

Not an Apple fan but what they are doing is perfectly legal under Irish law. The EU here is just trying to override Irish law and be a big tax collector..

It breaches EU law, Ireland is a member and has made it clear they want to stay so they can't have their cake and eat it.

Apple says it broke nobody's law, how does it breach EU laws?

These so called EU laws are the one of the reason the Poms want out of the EU..

Ireland were happy to take the assistance post GFC, they still want all the benefits of the EU, but it would seem some think this should be a pick'n'mix thing.

Nudibranch

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#1620082 31-Aug-2016 09:24

dejadeadnz:

The likes of the Macrumors forum will be a hoot to read. The wailing of the blind Apple fanboys is bound to be cringeworthy.

We (a couple) own 6 Apple devices between us and I have a windows desktop. Apple's products are generally excellent (the iPad) to quite nice (Macbook Retina) in my books but nothing about the company gives me any reason to blindly love and defend it like those people do.

Exactly how I feel dejadeadnz. Glad I'm not the only one.

KrazyKid

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#1620109 31-Aug-2016 10:44

Sounds like a good decision to me.

However if it sticks them Apple will move HQ to some other country - but we have to start somewhere.

Some interesting commentary I heard this morning on RNZ included

1) this will take about 3 more years to move through the EU courts, but after that its finalized one way or another

2) If the ruling sticks Apple USA get a equal US tax credit on their US earnings so Uncle Sam will be out of $20 Billion in tax revenue!!

3) the effective tax rate Apple paid in 2014 was 50 euro per 1,000,000 (1 million) euro earn!!!

frankv

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#1620172 31-Aug-2016 12:48

From Apple's letter:

...we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland, the largest taxpayer in the United States, and the largest taxpayer in the world.

I'm astounded. I'd have thought MS, Google, etc would make bigger profits and therefore be bigger taxpayers than Apple. Makes me wonder what cunning schemes *they* have to avoid it. I also wonder how Apple knows how much other taxpayers are paying.

...Apple follows the law and we pay all the taxes we owe

Apple, and every other corporate, manipulates its affairs to minimize the amount of tax that they "owe", so this is disingenuous (and somewhat irrelevant) spin. There's also no question about *Apple* doing anything illegal.

Here's my understanding of what Apple and Ireland did...

The Irish Govt agreed with Apple that it would only pay tax on profits from stuff made or sold in Ireland, presumably as an incentive to set up a factory in Ireland. Apple then set up paper companies in Ireland to claim the profit on sales from throughout the world (including, I assume, NZ). So Apple makes no profit in NZ, because all Apple computers are sold by "Apple Sales International" in Ireland. Of course "Apple Sales International" makes a profit, but because it's on sales in NZ of goods made in China, they don't pay tax in Ireland either.

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

.. two tax rulings issued by Ireland to Apple have substantially and artificially lowered the tax paid by Apple in Ireland since 1991. The rulings endorsed a way to establish the taxable profits for two Irish incorporated companies of the Apple group (Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe), which did not correspond to economic reality: almost all sales profits recorded by the two companies were internally attributed to a "head office". The Commission's assessment showed that these "head offices" existed only on paper and could not have generated such profits. These profits allocated to the "head offices" were not subject to tax in any country under specific provisions of the Irish tax law, which are no longer in force. As a result of the allocation method endorsed in the tax rulings, Apple only paid an effective corporate tax rate that declined from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014 on the profits of Apple Sales International.

The EU is concerned, I think, because they have given Ireland a lot of aid money. The EU has rules about countries receiving aid giving tax incentives, to prevent aid money from being funneled into corporate pockets. So it was not legal for Ireland to give Apple these tax breaks *and* to get aid money from the EU. (Also, in the EU's eyes, if Apple had paid the taxes they owe, then the EU wouldn't have had to give Ireland so much aid.)

So the EU has told Ireland to get recover the taxes that it ought to have got in the first place. And presumably the EU will then claim back some chunk of the aid it gave to Ireland.

dafman

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#1620350 31-Aug-2016 17:50

apple crumble

tdgeek

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#1620356 31-Aug-2016 18:04

Nudibranch:

dejadeadnz:

The likes of the Macrumors forum will be a hoot to read. The wailing of the blind Apple fanboys is bound to be cringeworthy.

We (a couple) own 6 Apple devices between us and I have a windows desktop. Apple's products are generally excellent (the iPad) to quite nice (Macbook Retina) in my books but nothing about the company gives me any reason to blindly love and defend it like those people do.

Exactly how I feel dejadeadnz. Glad I'm not the only one.

I dont go there much these days, but I do see there are plenty of Apple users who are users, fans, but a mile from fanboys, who are happy to criticise Apple.