EU Drops Court Case After Apple Repays More Than $16 Billion In Taxes and Interest To Ireland (theguardian.com) 118
"Ireland's government has fully recovered more than [$16 billion] in disputed taxes and interest from Apple, which it will hold in an escrow fund pending its appeal against a European Union tax ruling," reports The Guardian. From the report: The European commission ruled in August 2016 that Apple had received unfair tax incentives from the Irish government. Both Apple and Dublin are appealing against the original ruling, saying the iPhone maker's tax treatment was in line with Irish and EU law. Ireland's finance ministry, which began collecting the back taxes in a series of payments in May, estimated last year the total amount could have reached -- [$17.5 billion] including EU interest. In the end the amount was [$15.2 billion] in back taxes plus [$1.4 billion] interest.
For its part, the commission said it would scrap its lawsuit against Ireland, which it initiated last year because of delays in recovering the money. "In light of the full payment by Apple of the illegal state aid it had received from Ireland, commissioner (Margrethe) Vestager will be proposing to the college of commissioners the withdrawal of this court action," the commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said. Ireland's finance ministry said its appeal had been granted priority status and is progressing through the various stages of private written proceedings before the general court of the European Union (GCEU), Europe's second highest court. The matter will likely take several years to be settled by the European courts, it added.
For its part, the commission said it would scrap its lawsuit against Ireland, which it initiated last year because of delays in recovering the money. "In light of the full payment by Apple of the illegal state aid it had received from Ireland, commissioner (Margrethe) Vestager will be proposing to the college of commissioners the withdrawal of this court action," the commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said. Ireland's finance ministry said its appeal had been granted priority status and is progressing through the various stages of private written proceedings before the general court of the European Union (GCEU), Europe's second highest court. The matter will likely take several years to be settled by the European courts, it added.
Apple has paid nothing. (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple has not repaid anything. What they have done is use the tons of money they have doing nothing in Ireland, and put it in a escrow account.
Now that money is sort of working for Apple. The EU wants a big chunk, and Apple will go to court to prevent that. Meanwhile, Ireland will be beholding
to Apple for preventing the EU suing Ireland. The EU knew it could not win against Apple, so they went after Ireland. Now we have a proxy court battle.
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Ireland collects disputed Apple taxes in full ahead of appeal [reuters.com]
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Ireland's escrow account, not Apple's. I hope you understand the difference.
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It makes no difference until the appeal is exhausted, I hope you get that. They can't collect or use that money until they actually win the decision in court, so to say it's really collected is a misnomer. It's in escrow, pending appeal. I don't see why this is hard for you or why you'd need to push back like it were subject to opine.
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So you admit that Apple no longer has that $16 billion.
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They can't collect or use that money until they actually win the decision in court
EU will collect interest on it during the appeal period. The joint appeal by Apple and Ireland (putting its own interests above the rest of the EU) is unlikely to go in Apple's favor. You can always hope, but Apple can basically kiss that money goodbye. From here on out Apple better stop cheating on tax or things will get much worse. As far as I know there were no penalties this time. That could well change if Apple continues to act badly.
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the governments over there had been accepting Apple as paying it's taxes for over a decade
Not so, this is about back taxes. [nytimes.com]
Re:Apple has paid nothing. (Score:4, Informative)
Not so, this is about organised and extremely corrupt tax fraud with corporations corrupting governments to cheat on taxes. It is all about income shifting, and cunt countries like Ireland enabling it.
The Irish government being a raging pack of cunts and scheming with corporations with the idea "Hey lets be a jack pack of greedy fuck head cunts. We provide hugely reduced taxes for licences fees, corporations will shift to Ireland and we will steal other countries social services. Whilst we get great big huge deposit in our tax haven banks accounts for first class luxury holidays for the rest of our lives. Fuck those idiots in the countries we are cheating of taxes upon the revenue generated there, fuck them to death, suckers, morons, let the infrastructure die, let them die for want of health services, we are Irish Cunts and we come first".
Those countries who the Irish government in a total cunt act, cheated, so sue the fuck out of the Irish government and drive them to bankruptcy, let the fuckers economy burn in poverty. All taxes should be paid at the point of revenue, all profits, every single last fucking cent, should be declared at the point of revenue and all taxes paid there. Cunt countries like Ireland should be driven into poverty and pay with decades of suffering for the suffering they willingly inflicted upon others, in a wanton act of economic piracy and the resulting suffering and death it did cause.
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They can't collect or use that money until they actually win the decision in court
EU will collect interest on it during the appeal period.
The EU will never own more than 0/10 of that money - how they hell do you think they can collect interest on it? Oh wait, there's your problem: thinking. Stop doing that, you always come up with something stupid. Always.
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the governments over there had been accepting Apple as paying it's taxes for over a decade
Not so, this is about back taxes. [nytimes.com]
"Apple Owes $14.5 Billion in Back Taxes to Ireland, E.U. Says" - your source proves his point in the fucking headline.
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Apple is a tax evader and got caught. Not like we haven't known this for many years. Apple is far from the only perp, just the worst one.
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This is just a common EU shakedown operation used to collect money from any company with deep pockets. And Ireland is appealing the decision rendered by the EU. What's interesting is when Ireland offered Apple various incentives to enlarge it's footprint in the country they were not violating any existing EU rules and regulations at the time.The EU changed the applicable rules and regulations AFTER the Ireland-Apple agreements were formalized. And in this particular case the EU are trying to apply their up
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Ireland tweets:
"Funding secured! We're buying Tesla and taking it private!"
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The correctness of that is in the eye of the beholder.
Re:Apple has paid nothing. (Score:4, Informative)
Fault? (Score:3, Insightful)
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How does making apple pay “back” taxes to Ireland punish Ireland for making an illegal tax agreement with Apple?
More to the point, why does the EU care if Ireland collects taxes from Apple? If it has to do with EU contributions, it's practically rounding error.
Re:Fault? (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, why does the EU care if Ireland collects taxes from Apple?
Because Apple is reporting profits in Ireland that were not actually earned in Ireland. This gives Apple an unfair competitive advantage and compels other companies to seek similar tax shelters, and compels other countries to lower their corporate tax rates in a "race to the bottom".
There are two solutions:
1. Harmonize corporate income tax rates, so all countries, or at least all EU countries, tax at the same rate.
2. Stop taxing profit. Profit is very easy to manipulate and shift around. Instead, tax sales, or payroll, or dividends, or charge resource excise taxes, or infrastructure use fees, or whatever. None of those can be easily shifted between jurisdictions.
The EU's lawsuit against Ireland is trying to impose #1, but #2 would be better for Europe's economic future.
Re: Fault? (Score:1)
Lol no apple is Not reporting profits in the US. At least not any more than they have too. They have various eu and other islands based tax havens to avoid wherever they can
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In the US they have an office at Reno, Nevada to avoid paying taxes IIRC.
They also park (or used to park) the money of their international operations ofshore in the British Virgin Islands IIRC.
Much of the tax evasion is due to abuse of patents and the like. They have an offshore companies which "own" the patents and license them at a cost which makes the subsidiaries operate at zero profit.
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So how do you define where profit was “actually earned”?
The product was designed in country X, made in country Y and sold in country Z. Was the profit “actually earned” in X, Y or Z?
The company C paid $50 to designing company A in country X and $50 to manufacturing company B in country Y and sold the product in country Z for $100. Does that mean it made no profit at all?
Companies A and B “actually earned” profits in country X and Y, right?
Both were actually owned by the s
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Profits earned from apple products sold in all EU countries were routed through Ireland, thus a phone sold in France was, according to the books, sold from Ireland.
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I've been advocating this for years. People need to stop thinking of taxes as a way to "stick it to x" (where x = rich person, corporation, someone you don't like). And start recognizing taxes for what they are - diverting a part of the country's productiv
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No. The reason the EU cares is that a country must treat all its residents and resident companies on an equal footing. Ireland offered lower tax rates to Apple than it does to other companies, which is illegal in the EU.
Ireland is allowed to and does undercut other EU countries in corporate tax rates in order to attract businesses. That practice is frowned upon, but allowed, for the time being.
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Ireland offered lower tax rates to Apple than it does to other companies, which is illegal in the EU.
It most certainly is not. There are hundreds of companies across the EU that get special tax incentives, subsidies, etc... And they are absolutely targeted, in the same way Apple gets breaks in Ireland.
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Because Apple is reporting profits in Ireland that were not actually earned in Ireland. This gives Apple an unfair competitive advantage and compels other companies to seek similar tax shelters, and compels other countries to lower their corporate tax rates in a "race to the bottom".
That very well may be, but seems to be outside the scope of the EU's charter of things to regulate - primarily rules on trade and travel. Taxation is an internal state matter.
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More to the point, why does the EU care if Ireland collects taxes from Apple? If it has to do with EU contributions, it's practically rounding error.
The whole purpose and point of the EU was to level the European playing field economically and prevent countries from fighting with one another economically (which in the past has not so indirectly lead to them fighting physically too). The EU's only concern here is that Ireland doesn't offer tax breaks to corporations and gain favourable treatment as a result.
Most EU rules are based around this common economic model.
Well you see (Score:2, Interesting)
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Microsoft finally learned to respect the law in Europe after getting whacked with multibillion dollar fines. Amazing thing: it took more than one. But they eventually did learn to jump when the EU says jump.
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Actually we don't punish people for civil matters like this in Europe.
There is no concept of punitive damages when suing someone or some entity. There is no restorative justice, which means the amount of money awarded is calculated to restore things to how they would have been if the problematic thing hadn't happened.
So in this case the back taxes and interest need to be paid to the government that will spend it on the citizens who are entitled to it under EU rules, and also remove the incentive that Irelan
Re:Fault? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a long term lose-lose situation.
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I get that, but Ireland was complicit in the deal. Their punishment, get $16 Billion.
The EU's job is not to punish Ireland, which in practice means punishing its citizens who had little to do with this. The EU's job is to keep the internal market regular and uphold the four freedoms and so on.
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Citizens of various jurisdictions and socio-ecomomic classes will be punished by Apple forfeiting $16B too, you have just made value judgments about who its ok to punish for this and who it isn’t.
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This would be like a joyrider giving the car back and you saying it should be given to the neigbour.
Not even close. Both Ireland and Apple assert that the money belongs to Apple, not Ireland. The EU is stepping in and saying that Ireland must take more of Apple's money in order to comply with EU treaties. In effect the EU is acting as if this money belong to the EU, not Apple or Ireland, to allocate as the EU sees fit.
The EU's problem is with their treaty partner—which is Ireland, not Apple—but their response to this supposed treaty violation is apparently to hand the offender—Ireland
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which should ultimately result in their moving those businesses to other locations which can still offer those tax advantages
Unlikely, because the EU thought of that. The new rules are making it so that corporations pay tax proportionate to how much business they do in each country, regardless of if they funnel all the profit to some tax haven or not. So there really isn't any point pulling out of Ireland, it won't help them.
Re:It's not illegal (Score:5, Informative)
The issue is, Apple cooks its books to create the appearance of earning profit in Ireland that was in fact earned in other European states.
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Sales are already taxed in the EU. It's called VAT. This is about Corporate Tax.
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but shouldn’t the money go to EU coffers
The EU is not some overarching federal goverment. It's a join agreement of nations on rules. They don't act indepdently.
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The EU is a Confederation basically.
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1) It does not have an army.
2) It cannot collect taxes directly.
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1) It does not have an army.
Maybe not directly, but the CSDP comes pretty damn close to being an army, and it's powers are expanding.
All this means is... (Score:2)
...that because Ireland and not Apple is holding the money in escrow pending the legal decisions on the validity of the Irish tax legislation and incentives in respect of Apple, there is no need for the EU to take Ireland to court for not collecting the money from Apple.
Ireland does not have this money (Score:2)
The title is misleading.
Ireland have setup an escrow account. (due to legalities around this, this took some time).
apple have lodged the money plus the interest into this escrow account.
While Ireland owns the account, it cannot touch the money. However, apple's 'debt' is paid at this point (so no more interest is owning on this).
What happens next is various court cases and appeals. Funnily, if Ireland _loses_ these court cases, then it gets all that money. If Ireland ultimately win, apple gets all the m
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; Protects against Spectre & Meltdown + redirect poisoned or downed DNS/botnets/malware downloads/malcript/email malicious payloads... apk
Please explain - in-depth please - how adding stuff to the HOSTS file will prevent speculative execution from accessing arbitrary memory under certain conditions.