<story><title>Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple</title><url>http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0830/812819-apple-tax-ireland/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>X86BSD</author><text>Every time this apple in Ireland tax issue comes up it makes my brain hurt, literally hurt to read all these replies who don&amp;#x27;t seem to look at this problem correctly.&lt;p&gt;First, Apple did nothing illegal. There is no wrong doing here. They pay tax in every country they owe tax. Period.&lt;p&gt;Second, perhaps it&amp;#x27;s not Apple that&amp;#x27;s the problem? Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;tax&lt;/i&gt; that is the problem.&lt;p&gt;If you have mega corps building entities outside its main jurisdiction to avoid the main jurisdictions tax burden, perhaps you need to revamp your insane tax code. Hmm?</text></item><item><author>shaqbert</author><text>The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.</text></item><item><author>tinkerrr</author><text>&amp;gt;And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds.&lt;p&gt;This is not a &amp;#x27;quirk&amp;#x27; as you think. No country in the world, other than the US, tax their corporations on already taxed profits in a different jurisdiction. This actually ends up hurting the US because corporations cannot repatriate already-taxed funds without being taxed again.</text></item><item><author>shaqbert</author><text>What Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and most other big US company do is the so called &amp;quot;double Irish&amp;quot;[1]. Essentially is a clever way of using two quirks of some EU countries loopholes in tax laws, from treating IP licensing fees (of course the brand and intellectual IP is owned by a British virgin island tax haven, where else could this stuff be created&amp;#x2F;invented), and the net result is that Apple et al end up paying single digit cents on the dollar in EU profits.&lt;p&gt;And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds.&lt;p&gt;How to pay dividends&amp;#x2F;fund buybacks, without repatriating those funds? Easy: Just issue debt (which your own subsidiary in the British Virgin islands making a killing on IP licensing might want to buy) or have your BVI IP trust fund buy those shares.&lt;p&gt;Now why would other EU countries let Ireland and the Netherlands get away with these accepted loopholes is a mystery to me, especially since Ireland had to ask for a bailout lifeline, and was in no position to negotiate firmly.&lt;p&gt;Why the US would allow their truffle pigs to not pay taxes on oversea earnings is clearly the result of expert lobbying.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Double_Irish_arrangement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Double_Irish_arrangement&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Certhas</author><text>No, if you have mega corporations build entities outside your tax code, you have a case of countries having designed very attractive tax codes for corporations. Small countries especially have an incentive to do so, as a smaller percentage of tax of a larger percentage of capital going through their country counts for a lot per capita.&lt;p&gt;As companies benefit from this incentive, they lobby to keep it around. Very successfully.&lt;p&gt;So no, revamping the US tax code is (quite obviously) not an answer to Apple not paying tax in the EU. Having enforced taxation rules that prevent the race to the bottom is. Unfortunately taxation is not in the remit of the EU at the moment. Hence the back door approach through &amp;quot;unfair tax benefits&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t need trade deals that harmonize things so countries can, we really need tax deals that harmonize, or at least put minimum standards on taxes.&lt;p&gt;Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t something like that fly? Well because if the impression European observers have gotten over the last years is correct, then Apple et.al. basically own US policy on that point, to such a degree that the US actually threatened the Commission against ruling as it did.&lt;p&gt;So no, Apple did nothing illegal, but what is happening is clearly wrong, and Apple is lobbying to keep it that way. Heavily and successfully. And that is wrong.&lt;p&gt;For an example of an ethical stance a corporation could take here: IBM was, at least for a while, lobbying for abolishing software patents while at the same time owning a massive amount of them and registering new ones.&lt;p&gt;A structural fix would be to work towards making the US (and the EU, and all other) political system more resilient to lobbying pressure from powerful corporations.&lt;p&gt;But that is about as hard a problem as you are likely to find.</text></comment>
<story><title>Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple</title><url>http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0830/812819-apple-tax-ireland/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>X86BSD</author><text>Every time this apple in Ireland tax issue comes up it makes my brain hurt, literally hurt to read all these replies who don&amp;#x27;t seem to look at this problem correctly.&lt;p&gt;First, Apple did nothing illegal. There is no wrong doing here. They pay tax in every country they owe tax. Period.&lt;p&gt;Second, perhaps it&amp;#x27;s not Apple that&amp;#x27;s the problem? Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;tax&lt;/i&gt; that is the problem.&lt;p&gt;If you have mega corps building entities outside its main jurisdiction to avoid the main jurisdictions tax burden, perhaps you need to revamp your insane tax code. Hmm?</text></item><item><author>shaqbert</author><text>The US tax code is a huge mess, agreed. But you gotta pay your dues (aka taxes) somewhere, and here Apple et al goes essentially Scot free. That is not cool.</text></item><item><author>tinkerrr</author><text>&amp;gt;And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds.&lt;p&gt;This is not a &amp;#x27;quirk&amp;#x27; as you think. No country in the world, other than the US, tax their corporations on already taxed profits in a different jurisdiction. This actually ends up hurting the US because corporations cannot repatriate already-taxed funds without being taxed again.</text></item><item><author>shaqbert</author><text>What Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and most other big US company do is the so called &amp;quot;double Irish&amp;quot;[1]. Essentially is a clever way of using two quirks of some EU countries loopholes in tax laws, from treating IP licensing fees (of course the brand and intellectual IP is owned by a British virgin island tax haven, where else could this stuff be created&amp;#x2F;invented), and the net result is that Apple et al end up paying single digit cents on the dollar in EU profits.&lt;p&gt;And with another quirk - this time in US tax laws - the do not even have to pay taxed in the US on those earnings, as they have not repatriated the funds.&lt;p&gt;How to pay dividends&amp;#x2F;fund buybacks, without repatriating those funds? Easy: Just issue debt (which your own subsidiary in the British Virgin islands making a killing on IP licensing might want to buy) or have your BVI IP trust fund buy those shares.&lt;p&gt;Now why would other EU countries let Ireland and the Netherlands get away with these accepted loopholes is a mystery to me, especially since Ireland had to ask for a bailout lifeline, and was in no position to negotiate firmly.&lt;p&gt;Why the US would allow their truffle pigs to not pay taxes on oversea earnings is clearly the result of expert lobbying.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Double_Irish_arrangement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Double_Irish_arrangement&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>soperj</author><text>This is the point where Godwin&amp;#x27;s law comes into effect. 
Seriously though, it was legal to own slaves in the US not all that long ago, most people now a days wouldn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;There is no wrong doing here&amp;quot;, just because it was legal.</text></comment>