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.

Comments

The spirit of the law

[GeekWithAKnife]

This is where push will come to shove.

You can have whole divisions of lawyers covering each and every aspect of the fine print to the nth level but the bottom line is;

Tax laws, breaks and reductions are not there to be professionally manipulated to the extent that you pay nothing.

Due to loopholes, exploitation and poor oversight megacorporations have had an unfair advantage for decades.

Apple execs will throw a hissy fit because they know they manipulated every legal loophole to pay less. "It's legal" they shout. The intent not to pay tax to any meaningful degree is fucking the rest of us over. The rest of us can decide to call BS and slap you with a fine to pony up what you owe.

Welcome to the iTaxes you owed us and never pay ALL THOSE YEARS -they are magical.

Re:Ex post facto

[Yvan256]

In my opinion it takes a lot of "courage" to ask them to pay those taxes. That's quite "innovative" if you ask me. The EU is not just thinking outside the box, they're "thinking differently" . And other puns...

Re:Taxation

[Reemi]

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.

Re:Ex post facto

[TheRaven64]

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...