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US Government Seeks To Intervene in Apple's EU Tax Appeal (reuters.com)

The U.S. government has sought to intervene in Apple's appeal against an EU order to pay back up to 13 billion euros ($14.8 billion) in Irish taxes, Reuters is reporting. From a report: iPhone maker Apple took its case to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe's second-highest, in December after the European Commission issued the record tax demand saying the U.S. company won sweetheart tax deals from the Irish government which amounted to illegal subsidies. The decision was criticized by the Obama administration which said the European Union was helping itself to cash that should have ended up in the United States. The Trump administration, which has tentatively proposed a tax break on $2.6 trillion in corporate profits being held offshore as part of its tax reform, has not said anything in public about the case.

4 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Game theory by ytene · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cite your sources.

    You likely can't; you have that the wrong way round.

    As a matter of fact, the US sets a precedent by heavily fining non-US companies at every opportunity. For example, when the LIBOR rate-rigging story broke, the New York AG fined British banks. Did any country in the EU fine JPMorgan over the insane dealings of the London Whale?

    If you step back and look at this, what you find is that US multinational companies play one EU state off against the rest so that they are able to off-shore their profits without paying tax.

    Or maybe you'd like this story, http://uk.reuters.com/article/..., about Starbucks, the US Coffee Shop chain, that paid no Corporation Tax on UK. From the article: "Accounts filed by its UK subsidiary show that since it opened in the UK in 1998 the company has racked up over 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) in coffee sales, and opened 735 outlets but paid only 8.6 million pounds in income taxes..."

    What is likely to have happened in the background is that Apple and the US Government have discussed a way that the US Government would intervene on Apple's behalf in the EU. In return, Apple would then repatriate some of their vast off-shore, un-taxed profits so that in return the US government could tax it. Win-win. Apple don't have to pay the full amount; the US government gets some tax revenue.

    There's a simple solution to this - tax profits in the country where they originate. If a multinational wants to trade in a country, they pay her taxes. End of.

  2. Re:Its free trade until the cash runs out? by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Technically speaking it would be against the constitution. The US government would be acting specifically on behalf of a single corporation not paying tax against the interests of all other corporations who are paying tax. They can appeal on a principle that affects all companies not to suit one company only. Right now the 'fuck the EU' as the US calls it, is pretty pissed off with all the messes created by the US to feed it's imperialistic ambitions, the insatiable greed of major US corporations, mussie refugees, the crippling of Russian trade, extortionate demands to buy US military equipment, demands that the EU import energy supplies from the US and pay more, the US hacking their digital infrastructure and the US playing buddy buddy with the funders of global terrorism.

    The only way the US could do worse right would be buy arresting European political activists and publicly executing them (something for which NATO has plans set it place). Right now the US arrogantly demanding the US companies should not pay taxes on revenue earned in Europe because those are American taxes they have no right to, would be a really stupid thing to do. The US seems set on a course of self destruction and there seems to be nothing that can be done to stop it, just isolate to them and protect the rest of the world from it.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. US government interference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The US regime should stop interfering in the affairs of other countries. If they don't, it seems that sanctions would be appropriate, since this is the approach the US empire itself employs, usually in the flimisiest of 'evidence'. At least here, we have strong evidence of regime interference in other's affairs.

  4. "helping itself" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    what a load of bullshit. How is asking a corporation that makes billions in profit to pay their taxes in the market they operate in, to "help yourself", when what America is doing is literally saying that EU tax money belongs to the US? The American flavor of greed is just unprecedented.