I'm not sure why folks find this statement controversial.
You're absolutely correct.
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Asks Indian Court to Block Antitrust Law Allowing $38 Billion Fine
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm not sure why folks find this statement controversial.
You're absolutely correct.
Why does it not make sense? You’re an advocate for assessing a worldwide fine on apples income and I’m an advocated you paying income tax in every US jurisdiction.
Seems a like for like comparison.
One is fining a company based on their value so that fines will actually be a deterrent, the other is suggesting I pay taxes to a country I’ve never lived in.
I already made an equivalent comparison, fining people based on their total earnings like how some Scandinavian countries do it.
Exactly. Paying a fine for locations outside of where the company does business. Seems like just an overreach as paying taxes in all 50 states.
We're mixing up things a bit because a fine is different than taxes, but if I work in multiple states, each state gets taxed on the money earned in that state. If I am based out of New York and move to California for a three month contract, California doesn't get to say "well, even though you lived/worked in New York for nine months and only lived/worked here for three months, we're going to levy our state taxes on the full year's income." They are entitled to tax the income earned in California. California can tax that California income as much as they like, but I'd think most everyone would agree they're not entitled to tax the economic activity of a non-resident when that activity happened outside of its borders.
If India wants to fine Apple 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% or even 100% of its Indian revenue for behavior in India, that’s at least internally coherent: local conduct, local "harm", local revenue. But once they peg fines to worldwide revenue, they are effectively monetizing success in Japan, the US, or China to punish conduct that is defined as occurring in their own region. Those other markets weren’t harmed and didn’t vote for those lawmakers.
Imagine an American company and an EU-only company have the same EU revenue and commit the exact same infringement. Why should the American firm pay a fine that is 10x or 100x larger solely because it’s successful elsewhere?
Obviously countries have the legal power to set fines however they want, but I absolutely have an issue with the fairness of pegging those fines to global revenue when the alleged harm is in a specific jurisdiction. If a regulator is punishing behavior that affects its market, then the penalty should be anchored to that market: that jurisdiction’s users, that jurisdiction’s harm, and that jurisdiction’s revenue, not money earned in China or Japan or the US.
No you haven’t. Like for like would be India taxing Apple based on their global income. So far you’ve only claimed they were like for like and questioned why I found your comparison not to make sense.
Fining a company based on their total worth, and having an individual pay 50 state taxes to a country they’ve never lived in before are completely unrelated and not like for like at all, and frankly seems like a very strange thing to bring up as an argument.
Fining a company based on their global revenue is similar to taxing a person based on the tax rates of all of the 50 states.