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From Business Insider:

"Back in 1991, Apple struck a tax deal with Ireland that was completely aboveboard and legal. The Irish government provided Apple with a "comfort letter" that said the company would pay very low rates of tax if it based its European operations in Ireland.

In the 25 years since, Apple has created thousands of jobs in Ireland. By 2015 it had 5,000 employees in the country. Another 1,000 jobs are planned for the headquarters in the Irish city of Cork. This year Apple will open its site near the town of Athenry, with another 200 jobs in the making.

The result of the deal between Apple and Ireland, intended or not, was pretty clear: Give us low taxes, and we will give you jobs. A note from a meeting between the government and an Apple tax adviser in 1990 said:

"Apple was now the largest employer in the Cork area with 1,000 direct employees and 500 persons engaged on a subcontract basis. It was stated that the company is at present reviewing its worldwide operations and wishes to establish a profit margin on its Irish operations."

Apple is now the single largest taxpayer in Ireland, so it has the kind of negotiating strength to get what it wants.

Apple has noted that its tax arrangements were agreed to repeatedly by Ireland's government. The European Commission itself says the agreements were legal, albeit mistaken. But Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission's competition commissioner, made Apple's Irish tax arrangements sound like a scam ..."

It sounds to me like the EU commissioner didn't like the deal .. not that the deal is illegal.


25 years ago Apple did not have billions in cash.....now they do and the governments are smelling a rather large pay da...that is why suddenly it is 'illegal'.
 
25 years ago Apple did not have billions in cash.....now they do and the governments are smelling a rather large pay da...that is why suddenly it is 'illegal'.
Yes, and Apple are the only company and/or individual that the governments are after right?
 
tax tax tax tax tax - lets just tax everyone to death -

Apple has been paying a 2% effective tax rate. That's absurdly unreasonable for a highly profitable company and asking them to pay their fair share is far removed from tax tax tax tax tax.
 
Nope. Apple's effective tax rate is 26%.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/financials/fi-126.1.AAPL.NAS

The imaginary 2% rate is based on ignoring the tax payments that Apple has deferred in accordance with US tax law.

In the United States, despite the majority of their profits being earned outside. So they're siphoning off that tax to the detriment of countries outside the US. That and the fact the corporate tax rate in the US is closer to 40%. Perhaps not illegal (although the EU has something to say about that) but definitely immoral.
 
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In the United States, despite the majority of their profits being earned outside. So they're siphoning off that tax to the detriment of countries outside the US. That and the fact the corporate tax rate in the US is closer to 40%. Perhaps not illegal (although the EU has something to say about that) but definitely immoral.
Nope. That (26%) is their global effective tax rate. They pay 35-40% tax rate in the US on income from the Americas.
 
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Nope. That is there global effective tax rate. They pay 35-40% tax rate in the US on income from the Americas.

And your answer to the fact they are only paying 2% tax to Europe on their profits earnt in Europe? Actually it doesn't matter what you think, the EU has already ruled it amounted to to illegal state aid and they have to pay it back.
 
And your answer to the fact they are only paying 2% tax to Europe on their profits earnt in Europe? Actually it doesn't matter what you think, the EU has already ruled it amounted to to illegal state aid and they have to pay it back.
Again, the 2% rate is made up. It is not based on real numbers. It's just a figure produced by comparing two unrelated numbers for shock value. As provided for by international tax law, Apple assigns most of the income from sales in Europe to the US where the value is created. This is perfectly normal and nobody is arguing it is illegal.

However, to overly simplify the real issue, Irish tax law allows Apple to create a stateless holding company where it can hold money generated in Europe before it is repatriated to the U.S. The EU is essentially arguing that Apple never intends to repatriate that money to the US, so it should all be taxed in Ireland even though Ireland does not claim the income as taxable. Obviously, Ireland and Apple disagree.
 
Again, the 2% rate is made up. It is not based on real numbers. It's just a figure produced by comparing two unrelated numbers for shock value. As provided for by international tax law, Apple assigns most of the income from sales in Europe to the US where the value is created. This is perfectly normal and nobody is arguing it is illegal.

However, to overly simplify the real issue, Irish tax law allows Apple to create a stateless holding company where it can hold money generated in Europe before it is repatriated to the U.S. The EU is essentially arguing that Apple never intends to repatriate that money to the US, so it should all be taxed in Ireland even though Ireland does not claim the income as taxable. Obviously, Ireland and Apple disagree.

And you don't think that is dodgy as hell? Let's hope you're not a business ethics tutor.

For the sake of clarity, I hold the same level of scorn for all international companies that operate in this manner. Apple is not the only one to fall under the spotlight.
 
And you don't think that is dodgy as hell? Let's hope you're not a business ethics tutor.

For the sake of clarity, I hold the same level of scorn for all international companies that operate in this manner. Apple is not the only one to fall under the spotlight.
There is nothing dodgy about it at all. These aren't loopholes. They are provided for by Irish and US law. Apple's been operating this way for decades.
 
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