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Tim Cook Calls Apple's Irish Tax Avoidance Accusations 'Total Political Crap'
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Doubt it. Northern Ireland is part of UK.
You got your Ireland's and apple confused
Oops, yeah posting without Caffine again. Got Ireland confused, but not Apple.
The only law that many people here know is "Apple is bad, everything they do is wrong". So they are on firm and well-researched legal footing (in their minds). Little things like "retrospective tax rulings" are irrelevant.
Exactly.
If Apple has managed to NOT pay the proper amount of taxes, in totality, based on the rates in the country in which the sales are logged, then the regions that did not collect the taxes are responsible for recovery of THEIR portion. Sounds to me like Ireland collected and distributed to the EU their appropriate portion as an agent of the EU responsible for servicing and collecting for their region.
Now, if Apple is not following the rules of how to record where sales occurred, there is a different issue to address.
That may be or not, but:
for this to happen somebody has to actually get the f up and "remind" those corporations that this "tax" thing is actually something that also applies to them. Because right now, Apple ain't paying taxes for those billions to America nor to anybody else.
It is, among the other cases, also a good reminder for Ireland to not build their economy on those, let's call them shady, tax deals.
How is it questionable and questionable by whom? Ireland has a sovereign right to set any tax rate it pleases. You and many others may not like that - but you will just have to put up with it.
The money that those unelected technocrats want us to tax is American money - nothing to do with Ireland.
If Ireland took the money - why then will Apple get a tax credit for that amount in America? Money cannot be taxed twice! That valid point was left out in that charade the other day. 'That' money is to be taxed when it is put back into the American system. When will that happen? That is between Apple and America to sort out.
So... are you saying Apple has managed to NOT pay the proper amount of taxes, in totality, based on the rates in the country in which the sales are logged??
In which countries does Apple have sales and has not paid the agreed tax rate?
I had my own engineering and design business and now retired not that matters but Apple is as much owner in these supplier networks as they are customers because without Apple some would cease to exist and it has been well documented the wages and working conditions that Apple suppliers offer their works which Apple says they review and oversee.
My opinion is simply that 'everyone' should be trying to make the world a better place, in anyway they can. If we don't do that, there is very little point in us existing at all.
Good business sense might be important, but it's far from being the most important thing in life.
If everyone is simply out for themselves, if money is the only thing we should care about, then we (or our children/descendants) are doomed.
It's also worth remembering that money doesn't actually exist in any meaningful sense. It's just a system that we developed to keep track of how people are indebted to each other, and rather amazingly everyone has agreed to follow it. Money should be nothing more than a means to an end, numbers in a bank account achieve nothing, unless you do something meaningful with them.
Tim isn't going anywhere, thinking anything else is delusional.
This is worst then what Steve would do? You do realized Apple has had this setup for decades in Ireland? This tax setup existed when Steve was at the helm and it existed after he was gone. This is not the doing of Tim Cook, this is the doing of Apple and once again, you'd be delusional to think Steve wasn't aware of how their operations were handled in Ireland.
Cook: Hillary, what kinda crap is Ireland trying to pull here, its total crap.
Clinton: Sorry Tim, would you like me to help?
Cook: Sure, I would like to donate more money to your campaign.
Clinton: Say no more fam....
Clinton: Sorry Tim, would you like me to help?
Cook: Sure, I would like to donate more money to your campaign.
Clinton: Say no more fam....
I can easily foresee Cook resigning in the next 12 months - the honeymoon always eventually ends.. Wait till the media blowback starts next week after the keynote... Should be fun
Yes, I will be getting the 7+ on day 1, but will still be fun!
The license thing isn't manipulation. It doesn't reduce Apple's tax liability. All it does is allocate profits to Apple USA instead on it's foreign subsidiaries. Nothing that a smaller company couldn't "pull off".
Again, the "head office" is essentially a holding company for income allocated to the U.S. There is nothing Apple can do with this money without paying taxes on it.
No you wouldn't. Apple paid all the taxes it owed under existing tax laws around the world, which is why it hasn’t been subject to enforcement proceedings by revenue authorities anywhere.
The EU's action is not about taxes, it's about politics, and in particular the bureaucratic and left-wing frustration that low-tax governments are using normal accounting principles to deny high-tax governments more revenue booty. Remember, Brussels is not using tax law as the basis for it's claim. Rather, it's using antitrust law to tell Ireland and other low-tax countries how to apply their own tax laws. Basically, Brussels is saying that taxes that are “too low” are somehow an illegal subsidy under EU state-aid rules. That's laughable.
And they did that. 12.5% to be precise. What they are not allowed to is to give tax benefits to selected companies. Which is argued that they did.
And:
"Apple set up their sales operations in Europe in such a way that customers were contractually buying products from Apple Sales International in Ireland rather than from the shops that physically sold the products to customers. In this way Apple recorded all sales, and the profits stemming from these sales, directly in Ireland."
So I'd say, until proven otherwise, those sales are indeed directly linked to Ireland regardless where they occured. I for one probably wouldn't oppose a law that deems such set ups impossibe, dunno, but that certainly would seem in this case as a ertrospective change of an existing law, which wouldn't be ok.
You are missing the point that neither Ireland nor Apple obeyed the applicable European laws in this case.
The simple fact is that Apple only paid 50 Euros in taxes per one million Euros in earnings. I don't know of any person that gets away so cheap, so it's nothing but common sense that something must be very, very wrong here. Every normal worker has to suck up a high tax per income ration than this mega corporation with 260 billion bucks in cash reserves. That just cannot be right nor can it be fair - neither morally nor legally, and the EU commission did the right thing there by looking very thoroughly into this case. And, quite unsurprisingly, they discovered that something illegal was going on.
It isn't punishment when you have to return something you stole. Apple isn't being fined.
Every other company in Ireland pays more taxes (about 12%) than Apple (under 2%).