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EU Finance Ministers Line Up Behind $21B Tax Ruling Against Apple (herald-dispatch.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the Associated Press: Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem urged Apple Saturday to "get ready" to pay up, as he and counterparts from other EU nations lined up behind a finding that the technology giant owes billions of euros due to more than a decade of improperly low taxation. Apple's bill could reach 19 billion euros ($21 billion) with interest, and both the company and Ireland, Apple's European headquarters are appealing the European Commission ruling. But on the last day of an EU finance ministers' meeting focused on ways to harmonize tax rules for international companies, Dijsselbloem told reporters that these "have an obligation to pay taxes in a fair way."
"International tax loopholes are a thing of the past," he said. Apple will have to pay back taxes both in the United States and Europe, he added, "so get ready to do that." Philip Hammond, his British counterpart, said the EU was keen "to make sure that international corporations pay the right tax at the right place. That's the fair way to do it, and we are going to make sure it happens."
Austria, France, and Italy are reportedly also watching the case closely.
"International tax loopholes are a thing of the past," he said. Apple will have to pay back taxes both in the United States and Europe, he added, "so get ready to do that." Philip Hammond, his British counterpart, said the EU was keen "to make sure that international corporations pay the right tax at the right place. That's the fair way to do it, and we are going to make sure it happens."
Austria, France, and Italy are reportedly also watching the case closely.
Except that it's not ex post facto. It's a step towards stricter enforcement, and that's why Ireland is also being spanked pretty hard right now, because the deals they made were in contravention of existing EU legal frameworks and treaties, and were as such illegal and thus invalid. It's enforcement of the actual law, not of an illegal and underhanded deal between irish politicians and various megacorps such as Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and a whole crapton of others.
They didn't change the rules afterwards. Irish politicians and corps like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet etc made deals that were in contravention of existing EU treaties and laws. This trial, that has taken years to come to this verdict, goes back to strict enforcement of old treaties and laws
No, Ireland can set any tax rate as it wants. Nothing in the EU takes that right away from Ireland.
What Ireland is not allowed to do is to provide reductions for specific companies. EU laws try to create a fair playing field.
A lot of people outside of Europe (and to be fair, even Europeans) doesn't understand how the EU works. Ireland can't simply decide to stop obeying EU treaties any more than a US state is allowed to all of a sudden decide that someone no longer have to pay federal tax. If that happened, you can be sure that the IRS would demand the taxes be paid in full after they found out about it.
So long as it doesn't let one company off of paying that tax
The Irish tax codes that Apple relied upon are available to any company based in Ireland that receives income from outside the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
Have gnu, will travel.
That analogy doesn't quite hold, because the taxes are paid to Ireland, not the EU. It's more akin to one US state deciding that a company doesn't need to pay state taxes. This kind of thing is completely legal in the USA, which is why states in the US have seen a race to the bottom for various tax rates. The problem with the ruling is that, until a few months ago, everyone thought that this was legal in the EU too. It has, however, always been illegal for an EU nation to subsidise a particular company (with a few carefully regulated exceptions).
The recent ruling is saying that an agreement that says that Apple doesn't have to pay $21B that it would normally have had to pay is equivalent to the Irish government giving Apple $21B. I have a lot of sympathy with that interpretation (you give me $1 and I give you back $1 is very similar to you not giving me $1 in the first place), but it's a little bit surprising that this kind of clarification would happen after decades of lots of similar deals. It's also quite surprising that Ireland hasn't been fined: If this is illegal state subsidy, then the state providing the illegal subsidy is more in the wrong than the company accepting it, yet it appears that their punishment is to receive $21B that they didn't expect. I would be very happy to be punished by the EU in exactly the same way...
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Ireland ratified the Treaty of Lisbon on October 21, 2009 (Dáil Éireann) and October 22, 2009 (Senate). Presidential assent was granted on October 27, 2009.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The same PCI EIDE card cost $20 for PC or $100 for Mac "back in the day"
Back in the day, Macs came with OpenFirmware and so required different ROMs on the PCI cards. This typically added to the cost (the FORTH code in OpenFirmware provided a complete interface, whereas the tiny bit of PC BIOS code did far less and so required a smaller ROM chip) and had a far smaller market to amortise the run over. Amusingly, given your argument, quite a few companies I know bought graphics cards from Apple, because they worked fine in any OpenFirmware system and Apple sold you precisely the same card as Sun, but at a quarter of the cost. For a few models, the hardware was the same, so you could get the PC version and reflash it with the OpenFirmware firmware, but that typically voided the warranty and didn't always work.
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Well, in this case the people (Ireland) that stands to collect appealed...
Of course, and a statute of limitations applies here too. That's why it only goes back to 2003 and not to 1991 when Ireland artificially lowered the amount of tax they said Apple would have to pay
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'