Indeed. But money/greed weren't his main drivers (as explained here 100k times before) so that has little relevance here.
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Apple Denied Request to Ban Tax Protestors From Its Stores in France
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Forgot the /s at the end for "sarcasm" or are you for real?Pay no attention to these silly paid protesters. Most have no job, no idea what they are protesting, or any knowledge of history going back over 1 month. In 15 years the EU will be gone. Let them have their Baguettes in peace.
The methods they use to earn their money are right wing, not the act of protecting it.
No. It doesn't. Commodity companies can survive and flourish - but can have millions of haters at the same time, that will mobilise one way or another.
You have so little knowledge and are unwilling to learn - so I am not going to explain this further
My “little knowledge” has little to do with your out of touch views on the reality of it. Please don’t confuse Your negative posts of everything Apple with teaching..
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If an "out of touch" guy is able to explain of what happens in France, you might either follow that or not.
Your rumble says the more about yourself.
And as explained innumerable times greed ends in disaster, but producing sales through products people buy is generally rewarded for, for profit companies.
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Does France represent the world? Or apple’s customer base? Does your views identify with what’s happening there?
I’d say that as for any major corporate, they have had specialist accountants and lawyers from the big four advise and review the structure and found it all to be above board. So it’s all legal from their perspective. As said, the courts can rule on any disagreement. As also said, it’s the law makers from various countries that are responsible for the present situation and any ‘loophole’ there may be, bearing in mind that loopholes are actually legal.
That’s not an answer to the question. But my response is one should carefully choose the company they do business with.
If there is a majority of “customers” that truly don’t like Apple or aspects of it, it would seem that sentiment would be reflected in the company earnings. I buy Apple for their products, how much tax they pay doesn’t affect my purchase plans.
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Yeah, I don't think Apple would have had reason to believe that the European Commission would come along years later (i.e. years after it got the advance opinions in question) and conclude that those opinions constituted state aid under the EU's rules. I don't think anyone should have anticipated that, because it's an extreme stretch.
Tax laws are often complex and the way they would apply to particular situations isn't always clear. For example, there might be some question as to how a company was allowed to determine transfer pricing as between separate branches of a given corporation. That's the essence of the issue with Ireland and Apple and the Commission. So taxing authorities have processes by which entities or individuals can ask how things would work in a particular situation or what their allowed to do under existing tax rules. They ask for clarification. Perhaps they don't know how things are supposed to work or perhaps they think they know, but they want to be sure - they want definitive advise from the government entity which is responsible for determining such things. In the U.S. we call that process private letter rulings. In Ireland they apparently call it advance opinions. They are, more generally, referred to as tax rulings - interpretations by relevant taxing authorities of how tax laws would apply to particular circumstances.
The European Commission claims, in effect, that the tax advise that Ireland gave Apple - the advance opinions - isn't consistent with Irish tax laws or policies in general. It doesn't really establish that though. It doesn't, e.g., point to a provision of Irish tax law (or regulation) which states that transfer pricing can't be determined in the way that Ireland told Apple was allowed. It doesn't, e.g., point to a similarly situated corporation which was told by Ireland that it couldn't determine transfer pricing in the same way that Apple was told it could. Absent a law or rule or policy principle or interpretation which says that transfer pricing can't be determined a given way, it's reasonable to believe that it can be determined that way. That's especially true when the entity in charge of implementing tax law says that it can be. So I would say, having looked at the issues fairly closely (and having read, e.g., the Commission's full decision), that Apple acted in good faith in doing what it reasonably thought was allowed under Irish tax law and which it was told by Irish taxing authorities was allowed.
The closest the Commission got to demonstrating that the transfer pricing methods which Apple was told it could use conflicted with Irish tax law in general was by saying, in essence...
Well, being able to determine transfer pricing the way Apple was told it could yields results which we, and others (e.g. the OECD), don't think are right or fair. So, although we recognize that Ireland could have general policies which allowed transfer pricing to be determined that way - there's nothing we could do about that - we don't think those are Ireland's general policies because we don't think Ireland would have policies which yielded the results which we don't think are right. Again, Ireland's free to have those policies in general. But we don't think it would - even though it claims it does - so we conclude that it doesn't actually have such general policies, it just had such policies when it came to Apple.
The Commission claimed that X was true. Then it (maybe) demonstrated that Y was true. Then it asserted that it had demonstrated that X was true. Its full decision is quite disingenuous. It recognizes that, under EU rules, it can't punish Ireland for Y. So it pretends that it demonstrated X, even though the decision spends all of its time trying to demonstrate Y rather than X. In other words, there's no there there. No one has yet been able to point to what specifically Ireland advised Apple that it could do which is in violation of Irish law or which other similarly situated companies have not been allowed to do. So they just bring up results (e.g. certain Apple corporations having a very low taxable base in Ireland). But such results aren't contrary to Irish law. There's no rule that says a corporation's taxable base can't end up being very small in relation to the amount of profit it made. Indeed, the way Irish law worked at the time it was designed to allow that to be the case in some circumstances (e.g. when Irish corporations had both domestic and non-domestic branches). The issue is what policies and tax base determination methods caused those results, and are those policies and determination methods contrary to Irish law.
That said, even if we accept the Commission's conclusion that Ireland allowed Apple to do something which was contrary to Irish tax policies in general (i.e. to determine transfer pricing in certain ways), that conclusion is far from an obvious one. It would have been reasonable for Apple, acting in good faith, not to foresee that the Commission would one day reach that conclusion. It was relying on the government entity which it was supposed to rely on - even under EU rules - when it came to deciding what Ireland's tax laws allowed or didn't allowed. If an individual or entity can't go to the proper taxing authority for a given jurisdiction and rely on what that authority says the laws allow or require, then that's a recipe for all kinds of problems. Who else is it supposed to go to? Under EU rules, the EU didn't get to say what Ireland's rules could be. Apple surely understand that. So why would it think the EU was better positioned to tell it what Ireland's rules were than Ireland itself was?
Yes, I know its quite sad. The astronauts left mirrors on the surface.. so thats another test to prove humans got to the moon.
There's people who think Florida shootings were a big hoax too.
Nut cases.
Raiders/protestors and customers are different peer groups, as explained.
Stop assuming your (or my) behavior as the norm. It is a falsification for this phenomenon
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This is not how concatenation of tax rules works, where multinational corporations have to comply with both national and EU regulations (above it's own assumptions....)
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If I’m assuming my behavior is the norm, by your very own logic you can’t assume your behavior is the norm either (as you said), and from my viewpoint in the minority. IMO, most people are not as emotionally tied to jobs as some I’ve seen here or anthropomorphize him. So I do believe many customers have a neutral viewpoint on this.
However raiders / protestors have no influence on a company many people happen to like and products they like as well. This is not about save the whales or seals and is about tax, which only a small minority of people care about, apparently, compared to apple’s customer base.
In this context, the only EU rule which is relevant is that what Ireland allowed Apple to do can't represent state aid. That means that it can't, in combination with other factors, represent a selective advantage given to Apple. (I can go into greater detail on the EU rule in question, and what's required for it to be violated, if you'd like.)
The Commission didn't accuse Ireland or Apple of violating substantive EU tax regulations. Indeed, it recognized that Ireland has autonomy when it comes to tax policies. The issue is whether the advance opinions which Ireland issued regarding Apple endorsed practices (e.g. transfer pricing determination methods) which were contrary to the ordinary rules relating to corporate taxation which apply in Ireland. In other words, what matters is whether Ireland let Apple do things which violated its own tax rules. If you don't accept my representation on that point, you can read the Commission's decision for yourself.
Ireland could, if it wanted to, have general tax policies which meant that corporations weren't taxed (in Ireland) at all. That wouldn't violate EU rules. It was also allowed to have the general tax policy which is, in reality, what the Commission had a problem with - i.e., the unusual corporate tax policy which allows for companies such as Apple to avoid a great deal of corporate taxes in Ireland by having non-Irish branches of Irish corporations which account for the bulk of those corporations' profits. That was a quite unusual rule and it, along with less rigid transfer pricing rules, allowed a lot of the profits of Irish corporations to effectively not be taxable anywhere. But that was a generally applicable rule, it wasn't a selective advantage given to Apple. So as much as many (to include some in the EU) thought it made for unfair taxation policy, there wasn't anything the EU could do about it other than put pressure on Ireland to change the rule (which Ireland did). The Commission couldn't punish Ireland for having that rule because EU member states have autonomy to have such rules. So it tried to make the case that Ireland's transfer pricing rules (which Ireland was also free to choose for itself) weren't actually what Ireland claimed they were.
Well let's contrast what we know. According to the New York Times there is zero record of Steve Jobs having donated to any charity. He briefly established a foundation in his name but disbanded it before doing anything with it. The person he hired to run it said he didn't have any time to devote to making charitable decisions. Angela on the other hand also started her own foundation and gave 50k shares of her Burberry stock to it (a little over 3/4 million dollars). Cook established the Apple charitable match program at Apple which has given over $50MM to charitable causes, Steve never did something like that. If you're going to claim Steve was altruistic and current Apple execs are greedy pigs I'd suggest you come with better evidence than "as explained here 100k times before."
Does Apple "own" the property or rent the retail space? If they're renting it...too bad, so sad, go suck an egg. Pay your taxes. You want to do business, pay your taxes everyplace you earn revenue. Don't try and hide anything, circumvent anything, just pay what you owe, exactly what you owe, not a deep discounted allotment, not partial, everything. #ousttimcooknow
It doesn't work that way, even if you are renting people don't have the right to deface the store like that, sorry.
Yeah, that's what's happening. Ireland will have new laws, and it's unclear whether Apple will suffer. IDK what "right to white wash history" is (you mean Right to be Forgotten?).
I knew I was taking some risks with this analogy, but I'll bite : in most case, the consumer is always right so it's not a problem in a sale contract ; you've been advertised it (wrongly) as 100 so it'll just cost 100, except if the boss can prove you had good reasons to suspect it was wrong and went with it. they'll most likely ask for the product back and refund you
In the case of a company, especially one as rich as Apple with the army of lawyers enough to inhabit the small country their cash could buy, is expected to know the law of the place they try to settle at : especially when they're clever enough to optimize (i said optimize, not avoid) all their taxes in the whole of the EU.
It clearly shows they know what they're doing, and since they did their homework, they also suspected that deal was against the EU law - or their lawyers should all be fired.
As said, the courts have ALREADY ruled it was an illegal arrangement, you don’t seem to have grasped that everything you precur to has already happened. It’s fact. It was not a loophole it was a breach of EU law.
Not a 100% true according to the news articles. The money is going into an escrow account and the legal battles will continue. It is entirely possible, the money could be remitted back to apple, or Ireland could collect the money after all appeals are exhausted, which the article notes could take several years.
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/18/apple-ireland-13b-euros-payment-schedule/
I never claimed Steve to be altruistic. On the personal level Jobs indeed was a crook that quarrelled with Steve Wozniak over a few thousands of $ and didn't provide his wife and kid the money they needed.
I am talking about business strategy: if Jobs would have wanted to milk the industry he would have gone the Dell/Compaq route: making a fortune with a cheap IBM clone, as many others did at that time.
But he was obsessed in developing the best products (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad etc) that had a hard time climbing up the ladder but ultimately winning the market.
Tim has stated many times he wanted to maximize profit per customer (i.e. milk the last dollar out of each) which is an entirely different game (defensive, keeping marketshare, innovation latency to not disrupt current business, keeping patents to inhibit others instead of using them for innovation)
Which - next to phenomenal volumes - leads to mental slowdown, negligance of the Mac line, quality problems.
For Jobs, it would be impossible to have products like AirPower, HomePod to be delayed this way.
Oh, and the millions they donate are a fraction of what the old lady in the streets does, percentagewise. Lots of PR there with those overly "public" donations.
And Cook's "compassion" with the disabled, health impaired etc. is salesmen's compassion: they'd never give away or discount anything to those who can't afford.
I would never use anyone within Apple as a norm when it comes to donations/charity - you do.
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I tend to follow you, but Apple lost a fair part of its public image by (perceived) avoidance behavior.
With cash piles as big as some continent budgets, they hardly know what to do with their money.
So everybody expects them to take the broader social responsibilities that they claim themselves to be leading in (the environment, equality, labor conditions, healthy finance) instead of tax law outsmarting and penny pinching they do (and some other shortcomings in these area's, by the way)
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Apparently, it does work like that...in France. Also, other corporations look at Apple's behaviour in how they conduct their business and what they get away with, so everyone should be more concerned about Apple, Google and others and the way they avoid responsibility in their business affairs as well as with every aspect of their operations instead of defending them like a bunch of sheep. The day will come (maybe it already has started) when all of the Asian markets with their billions of people will mimic all of the negative aspects of the western world and the s storm which will ensue will be something you will not be cheering for nor defending. What's good for the goose. Monkey see, monkey doo doo...
Can you prove that statement or is it your opinion?
Tax avoidance is an absolute must. Social responsibility is not overpaying in taxes and as cfo, is that we’re to happen on your watch...you would be fired.
A large corporation Being cognizant of social responsibility does not mean that one needs to overpay taxes or not have products made in China because of perceived labor law violations.
Those who take continual issue with the company and the way it’s run makes one wonder why some continue to do business with them.