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Apple Appeals EU Tax Ruling, Says It Was a 'Convenient Target' (reuters.com)
Apple has launched a legal challenge to a record $14 billion EU tax demand, arguing that EU regulators ignored tax experts and corporate law and deliberately picked a method to maximize the penalty, senior executives said. From a report on Reuters: Apple's combative stand underlines its anger with the European Commission, which said on Aug. 30 the company's Irish tax deal was illegal state aid and ordered it to repay up to 13 billion euros ($13.8 billion) to Ireland, where Apple has its European headquarters. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, a former Danish economy minister, said Apple's Irish tax bill implied a tax rate of 0.005 percent in 2014. General Counsel Bruce Sewell and Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri outlined in an interview with Reuters at Apple's global headquarters in Cupertino the company's plans for its appeal against the Commission's ruling at Europe's second highest court. The iPhone and iPad maker was singled out because of its success, Sewell said. "Apple is not an outlier in any sense that matters to the law. Apple is a convenient target because it generates lots of headlines. It allows the commissioner to become Dane of the year for 2016," he said, referring to the title accorded to Vestager by Danish newspaper Berlingske last month.
They had to start somewhere, right Luca?
It might as well be one of the worst offenders, ie. You.
No sig today...
Apple was indeed singled out because it is successful (at playing the global tax avoidance system)
You can't allow your member states to shelter the companies and allow them to pay some 0.001% or whatever of their taxable income. Personally, I think the EU needs to die as soon as possible but they absolutely are in the right if you say they should exist that this isn't something that can be allowed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/b...
It says: "It’s been clear since the start of this case there was a pre-determined outcome. The Commission took unilateral action and retroactively changed the rules, disregarding decades of Irish tax law, US tax law, as well as global consensus on tax policy, that everyone has relied on.
The issue is not that they're successful, but that they were breaking the law. Sure, the amount due may have been less had they been less successful, but it would not have changed anything about the legality of their construct.
While it might be unwanted on the moral/ethical compass, tax evasion is not illegal. Apple played by the rules, and the Irish government agreed on it. The EU desperately needs more cash, so they try all sorts of things, including these tricks. This is a sign that the EU is cracking up. (don't confuse the EU with Europe, the first is a non-democratic monster while the other is the continent).
Maybe at the end of this the lesson here for Apple, Google, ... et al is that you should not piss off large blocks of nation states because they are bigger than you and not only do they have more lawyers than you, they make the laws. It must be surreal for a soulless megacorp to finally find out what it is like for a regular citizen when he/she gets bullied in court by somebody way bigger than them.
Every dollar or euro Apple doesn't pay has to be paid by somebody else.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Bloody fake news bullshit. No one cares about this Dane of the Year, from the third largest newspaper in Denmark. Especially not a social liberal and pseudo award from a conservative newspaper. I hadn't even heard about it before Apple brought it up as red herring.
Even though that hates Vestager agrees on her strength / flaws is not giving a shit what people thinks.
"because it disregarded tax experts brought in by Irish authorities."
Because your experts aren't biased *eye roll*
"The low rate is achieved by Apple telling U.S. tax authorities that the profits are earned by Irish units. Meanwhile it tells Ireland the profits are not earned in Ireland. "
"Sewell said the fact that an entity was a holding company with no employees on its books did not mean it was inactive and it could be actively managed by employees of its parent company." http://www.reuters.com/article...
Wow just wow. I guess Apple learned at the knees of Goldman Sachs. Pay your fucking taxes hippie!
I am annoyed by copying Trumpist dialog. Instead of proving that they are right, they make their case by slandering the opposition.
Except the EU has no remit on taxation AT ALL. It cannot legislate on tax. It's a matter for Nation States. It therefore has not legal basis to prosecute, so they're trying to word it as an unfair subsidy.
It cannot insist Ireland charge as much tax as Belgium, to harmonize taxation, as its trying to do here.
So the EU's claim is that it represents an unfair subsidy that disadvantages other competing companies in Ireland who compete against Apple. Trade and competition ARE within the EU. What Irish companies compete against Apple? It doesn't say. If it said which competitors are disadvantaged, then Ireland could simply refund the tax to those companies and poof this nonsense would end.
Why does EU restrict itself to competing companies in Ireland? Because then it can claim, Ireland broke the tax laws (of Ireland) to give an unfair competitive basis. If it tried to claim Ireland was giving an unfair tax advantage, that's clearly blocked by Nation States having taxation rights!
So Apple is breaking no laws, and Ireland is breaking no laws, and EU is trying to find a lever by which it can get a remit on taxation. Here it's trying to interpret Irelands tax laws, yet Ireland is the interpretter of Irelands tax laws, the EU has no say.
Well duh, of course you're an easy target
Apple is one of the most profitable companies on the planet (if not THE most profitable)
They earn millions or even billions of Euro revenue each year and pay less tax than a jar of Marmite. So yeah, it was pretty obvious Apple was doing a massive (moral, if not also legal) tax dodge.
Arguing that one should not be singled out for misconduct on the premise that everyone else is doing it is ultimately still an admission of guilt.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...apples have alway been a convenient target.
As all the others doing the same kind of shit (Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich, what not). Among them, EU companies, as there are VW (you heard of those recently, didn't you?), Bayer, etc).
But that is just peanuts.
The real traitors are the so-called "representatives of the people" who collude with companies to make exactly this possible. I mean, for example: the President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who set up a tax haven in his country (Luxembourg), living exactly off this repugnant behavior... at the expense of the other EU countries. And then he has the balls of calling the Greek "traitors". Juncker and his buddies are the traitors and should be in jail.
If anyone is breaking the EU then it's those corrupt assholes.
you might try something like PAYING YOUR TAXES!
Funny how these San Francisco Liberal do gooders lecture those of us to the right of center about the ethics of "paying our fair share" when we lament the high taxes, but when the shoe is on the other foot and it is their turn to pay up, they fight it like crazy...
https://europa.eu/european-union/topics/taxation_en
"The EU does not have a direct role in raising taxes or setting tax rates. The amount of tax you pay is decided by your government, not the EU."
They even admit it themselves.
Their remit is: Cross border value added tax (introduced under the remit of 'free trade') and European Union withholding tax (introduced under anti-money laundering). Any claim to legislate on tax is done by leveraging another directive.
What they're doing here is trying to pretend that can legislate tax laws based on the free trade and competiton directives. But if tax is decided individually by Nation States, then its decided by Nation States.
And as to "Ireland must demand that in tax from Apple", no. Any tax decision by Ireland is Irelands remit, and it would be for Ireland to decide if Apple would be required to repay the taxes if it broke Irish tax laws... which they didn't because Ireland makes no such claim.
When you are one of the world leaders in hoarding cash, it tends to make you stand out a bit when the Tax Man comes looking.
It becomes especially obvious when more than 90% of your entire cash reserves are overseas.
I would expect all of the players that use offshore tax havens will eventually be in the spotlight.
Apple just happens to be one of the first because their arrogance against paying taxes via tax havens will be used as an example for the rest.
A win against Apple would significantly decrease the amount of work that will be necessary to go after the others.
That's simply false, taxation across the EU is not set by the EU and corporate tax rates are not level across the EU or even within each nation state.
Corporate tax rate:
Austria 25%
Belgium 34%
Czech 19%
France 33% (36.6% above 3.5 million euros)
Germany 30.175% to 33.325%
etc. etc.
The rates are not required to be level across the EU, and they are not level even within each nation state. Taxation simply isn't within the EU remit, and your broad "no financial advantage" has no legal basis.
Apple does not receive state aid from Ireland and taxation is not within EU remit. The nations have not agreed to harmonize it, and so EU Commission has no such power.
If the my country's tax agency tell me I owe them 10k and then the EU comes and sue me for paying lower tax illegally the last 5 years, I would be really pissed. Even if EU is right it is not my fault if I filled in the tax forms correctly.
EU should go sue Ireland for the illegal arrangement rather than Apple.
By trying to circumvent the law. You could not have become a convenient target by playing by the rules.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... "if something seems too good to be true it probably is".
Apple: QQ! /care
EU:
Play with fire, get burnt Apple. Hope this is a warning for all other offenders out there (and there's MANY!).
'WAH it's not fair !! they are doing it to mum!!;
Dont like it then take your business elsewhere.
She does what all of us want to do. Make those big assholes who treat us like shit pay. That and she's deported to EU, so she can't fuck up things in our parliament anymore. I also voted for Messerschmidt for the european parliament because I wanted to get rid of him and he hates EU.
Guys, a lot of you are talking about tax evasion, which is not the point here. No one is accusing Apple of not paying the tax that they should to Ireland.
This is a case of illegal government subsidizing. Ireland has illegally (at least according to EU) given Apple an unfair tax and by doing so have illegally given state funding to Apple. This is not allowed in EU. The ruling is that Apple must have the standard Irish company tax, which leads to the enormous sum.
Whether this is right or not is a legal battle. But it's pitifully bad form by Apple to start throwing personal mud. "It allows the commissioner to become Dane of the year". That's far more than crossing the line.
The EU has just recently decided to reinterpret their laws to ban the rules Ireland has had in place for 25 years, and then do so retroactively to arrive at $14B.
I'm fully in favor of the EU shutting down this obvious tax shelter scheme, but: (a) society can't function if laws are reinterpreted retroactively, and (b) it's fundamentally uncompetitive to apply this revised reinterpretation to Apple alone.
Apple cannot even afford to put audio jacks in their phones anymore and these now these eurotrash bullies expect them to pay their taxes too!
For 25 years there wasn't a peep from the EU that Ireland's tax laws constituted illegal state aid. Then they change their interpretation--towards a single US company--and now they want that company to pay years of back-taxes.
For 25 years there wasn't a peep from the EU that Ireland's tax laws constituted illegal state aid. Then they change their interpretation--towards a single US company--and now they want that company to pay years of back-taxes.
There wasn't a peep because the tax rates were applied fairly to all companies. Apple then negotiated a special "Apple only" deal which applied only to them which the Irish were happy to do to have Apple's EU HQ in the country. That deal constituted being state aid of the type which is illegal in the EU for all member states.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
...because you didn't want to pay your fair share. Sorry, Apple, it's time to pay the piper. You've benefitted off the backs of Euro taxpayers as you utilized their infrastructure. If the US was smart, we'd get our dues as well. We, THE PEOPLE, don't owe any corporation a penny. They exist solely because we allow them to and in exchange WE get income taxes. It's time to pay up. Your trademarks and assets are protected because of my country's military. That has a price, boys.
For 25 years there wasn't a peep from the EU that Ireland's tax laws constituted illegal state aid.
Did Al Capone use the same defense when his "business" was raided? He was a honest business man until the U.S. decided to reinterpret its tax laws.
I can't believe the number of Apple supporters here. Come on! Apple is like every large scoundrel with lawyers, not only do they make billions, they like to fake victim status. Frankly they are a disgrace and they need to be told off. Have you seen how they tread employees?
I get that some people here don't like governments to have money, but govs are pretty much free to raise any tax they want anyway. Like death, taxes are a fact of life. Either you and I pay it with our hard-earned cash or some enormous, selfish company selling unnecessary, luxury, first world items pay it. Which do you prefer ?
Disclaimer: I'm a happy Apple customer. I don't care if Apple raise their price by 5% to pay for this tax. They already do it anyway (see last touchy-feely MBP with same specs as a year earlier).
They're a US company? Funny, I don't recall them paying the US any realistic taxes on all the money they make.
This is for the MBP 2016. Muhahahaha.
It seems Apple is willing to demonstrate that EU courts are not really independent. EU justice court's judges are appointed by common accord of the governments of the member states and hold office for a renewable term of six years (quoted from Wikipedia).
Silly troll, why not read a least one article about this so you don't come across as a total apple fanboi crying that his daddy ws arrested.