Slashdot Mirror
Apple Is Moving Its Entire International iTunes Business To Ireland (billboard.com)
Starting February 5th, Apple will be moving its entire international iTunes business from Luxembourg to its European headquarters in Cork, Ireland, according to a note sent to developers this week. The non-U.S. iTunes business consists of Apple Music and the individual stores for iTunes, iBooks and Apps. Internationally, iTunes is available in over 140 countries, while Apple Music is streaming in roughly 115 territories. Billboard reports: Apple announced its intentions to move its iTunes biz to Ireland in September when it transferred an estimated $9 billion of iTunes assets. At that time it also shuffled all existing developer contracts to Ireland-based Apple Distribution International. Like Luxembourg, Ireland is known for being a low-tax haven for international businesses. Last month, both Apple and Ireland announced they would appeal a record $14 billion tax bill from the European Commission, which earlier found it had been underpaying tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. Apple today is the biggest private employer in Cork, the Irish Republic's second-largest city, with a workforce exceeding 5,500. Economists estimate Apple's Cork operation pumps around $17 billion annually in salaries, tax and investment into the Irish economy.
I have seen people on slashdot accuse you of rape too. Does that make it a fact? Watch, I'll add another: PopeRatzo raped me. Boom! Fact.
Funny thing about the internet. You can check whether stuff has been reported before.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
http://fusion.net/story/328522...
http://gawker.com/the-time-don...
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
http://www.inquisitr.com/36114...
http://time.com/4572925/megyn-...
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/1...
There. That oughtta do it.
Now, where is the evidence that PopeRatzo raped you?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The Pussy Grabber in Chief is going to lower corporate tax from 35% to 15% so America can become tax-friendly like Ireland.
You should know that presidents don't get to set tax rates. That's up to the congress.
corporations don't pay taxes,
Corporations don't pay taxes, they only collect them. People pay taxes.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ireland's main claim to fame is a 12.5% corporate income tax. That's why myriad American companies are there at all.
Want to fix that? Pass the Fair Tax. Among the Fair Taxes' many beneficial changes would be the complete lifting of corporate income taxes. That would make the USA the newest, bestest corporate tax haven on the planet. Corporate executives would injure themselves in the stampede to build factories and move corporate headquarters to the USA. Our financial problems would be a thing of the past. We would be the richest, most prosperous nation on the planet by a wide margin. The reason we're not achieving our full potential right now is that the 2nd worst mistake this country has ever made, right behind slavery, is the income taxes. The Fair Tax abolishes _all_ the income taxes - individual, corporate, payroll, gift, estate, self-employment, capital gains, etc. etc. The IRS, and any tax based on income, is abolished. Only NEW items sold at retail, and services sold at retail are taxed. Tuition is exempt because it is really an investment. The Fair Tax may not make you rich - you still have to do that yourself - but doing it will get a lot easier under the Fair Tax as compared to under the income taxes.
Earlier in the EU the VAT of services like software could be paid to the country of the seller, and Luxemburg happens to have really low VAT. So how Apple dealt with this was that they routed their whole iTunes sales through Luxemburg and paid only the very low VAT from all their sales, then took 30% commission of the price without VAT and gave the rest of the money to developers by "buying service from an EU company with 0% VAT". This was a win-win for both developers and Apple, but mostly for Apple because they could higher commissions from the billions in sales yearly through iTunes, but a huge loss for most EU countries.
The EU finally closed the loophole and now services (just like physical products already before) need to pay the VAT to the country of the buyer after certain amount of yearly revenue. Apple has had its EU headquarters in Ireland for a long time because Ireland has very low corporate tax rate, they only had presence in Luxemburg because of the VAT loophole. Now they don't have use for Luxemburg so it only makes sense to move their iTunes business to Ireland and streamline their accounting.