Vocal Voices

in how to deal with the EU.

Now the EU is saying that Ireland won't get all it's back tax form Apple, that other EU countries will be "encouraged" to rape and pillage for taxes they never expected and that if Apple were to "invest in R&D" in the US, they would be allowed to skip paying these taxes.

So let me get it straight here. Tax on sales in the EU, in individual countries, can be offset against US R&D even though the company which "sold" those goods is incorporated in Ireland!

Right. The old EU standby. Make crap up and ladle it out.

Me, I'd advise them of another approach.

Give notice to ALL EU employees that their contracts are being terminated and that their business, including Apple Shops, are being shut down. Set the date of termination to 1 day before the Election in Germany for German staff and 1 day before the Presidential Election in France for the French staff.

Advise every current customer of Apple goods in the entire EU that their support and warranty are being moved to the UK and that all queries will be answered in English and ONLY English.

Then advise all customers in the EU that they can only buy new products online from the UK, from their newly incorporated company who had agreed a nice little tax deal with the UK government.... Of course they would build loads of new Apple Stores in London so that the EU customers could come and "feel the products" if they wanted.

Then I'd go HUGE on marketing in China, India and South America.

Chances that the Commission would be stuffed back in the box very, very, quickly? Pretty much up there.
Chances of it happening? Not a lot because companies still don't actually understand what the EU really is. Especially US companies.

But nobody will ever do it because nobody actually understands.

What a bloody farce. I can't leave them fast enough.

I like your style Suff

The principle of the EU's action is one that countries in the OECD, including the US, are working towards and I have to say that I sincerely hope the Apple and Irish appeal fails.

Between them they came up with a fix they knew broke the rules, but they still went ahead. However, now that Apple is told to fork out the back tax it is all tears and toys out of the pram.

The deal to pay only 0.005 - 1.0% cheated the Irish taxpayer, as well as other EU tax payers, and also those of the US, out of something like €13-14bn. That Ireland might not get all of the money boils down to the fact that had the deal not been in place some other EU countries should have been able to claim corp tax on Apple's trading.

If Apple wants to relocate to the UK, that's fine. It will have to pay CT at 20% and no 'sweeteners' will be allowed for trade with the EU, Brexit or not.

Anyone would think that Apple was the paragon of fairness when it comes to CT when it clearly is not.

The Senate panel's Monday report that said Apple avoided tens of billions of dollars in U.S. taxes on its income by shifting the funds through a global web of offshore entities — including three that had no tax residency in any nation.

Not even an office a phone or a fax machine.

The three entities were run by some of Apple's top executives but were located, on paper, in Ireland, though they in some cases had no employees. One reported $30 billion in net income for 2009-2012, yet filed no corporate tax return and paid no income taxes to any government during those years, according to the report.

Another affiliate received $74 billion in sales income over four years, but paid taxes "on only a tiny fraction of that income," the report said.

That's not all....

Apple also transferred economic rights for some of its intellectual property to its offshore affiliates in low-tax jurisdictions, saving tens of billions of dollars in levies, the Senate panel concluded in its latest look at corporate tax avoidance tactics.

The company then went a step further by using U.S. tax loopholes to avoid federal taxes on $44 billion in otherwise taxable offshore income from the intellectual property rights during the past four years, the report said.

So....

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, called Apple's quest for lower corporate taxes "the Holy Grail of tax avoidance."

Apple: a company set up and run on greed and one which will use elements of tax evasion to maximise its tax avoidance, to the detriment of taxpayers the world over.

Actually Apple only broke the rules slightly.

The EU has no tax competency, only cross EU Trade competency. Even then they can only rule that Ireland gave state aid to create an uncompetitive practise. In short they can't rule on taxes at all. But they have ruled that the tax deal with Apple was illegal state aid. In fact it was nothing of the sort, it was a corporation tax deal.

The tax deal with Apple falls within world regulations on tax and the US, itself, has spoken out about the EU illegally breaking their world trade obligations.

Well who would have guessed?

Then for the Commission to "invite" other countries in the EU to get "in on the game", for game it is and look at Apple for infringement of tax liabilities, based on their "illegal state aid" ruling, is just piling insult on top of farce.

What the EU is doing is illegal. There is no other word for it. Let's be totally frank here. As far as the WTO is concerned the EU is ONE and only ONE country with ONE trading agreement which, including tax, has to be followed.

The EU signed up to the WTO rules but does not want to apply them.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Apple, can't stand their products or their oozing unctuous BS, but I vociferously defend their ability to apply aggressive tax avoidance.

In all the links you put in below there was never one single word about evasion. Although there certainly was evasion with China and Japan which Apple has already forked up for without a murmur or a challenge.

The EU? The whole thing about reducing their back tax by future investment into US R&D just reveals the huge festering LIE that the commission is promulgating.

If they don't like the tax rules then damned well change them. Don't sign up to them and then whinge and whine and lie and steal and assume that they can do this with no retaliation because they’re “so big”. Acting like a gangster is acting like a gangster. Governments have to be held to a higher standard than businesses, so they can preach.

Ah, yes, I forgot. The EU is not a government. It just plays at it and takes the name for it and actually governs. But is not a government.

No matter how much I hate Apple, I hate the EU more and with very good reason.

Roll on when the UK leaves. With China’s current growth, the EU will be smaller than China in 3 years after we leave….

Bunch of second rate no hopers.

Suff wrote:No matter how much I hate Apple, I hate the EU more and with very good reason.

Of course, I am the other way about so we will never agree.

Before I go I will just say this: These problems are not caused, per se, by multi-national companies or countries or trading blocs, as such. They are caused by economists, lawyers, the IMF, WTO, UN, central banks, OECD and any number of other players who have complicated relatively simple things to the nth degree, and they all make a pile undoing their ineptness. Meanwhile the small taxpayer gets shafted, as ever was the case.

Workingman wrote:Meanwhile the small taxpayer gets shafted, as ever was the case.

On that one you might think about the VAT paid on the Gross sales of Apple in the EU, as opposed to the (relatively), small taxes levied, even at 20% on the Apple profit.

When the EU goes on about it's "corporation taxes" and avoidance, we have to remember that this is the third tax on the same money. Not the primary and not the secondary.

Apple has already paid the employee's tax on wages, the employees social fund, the employers social fund and the purchaser has already paid a minimum of 20% VAT and, in some cases, in the EU, even more.

If Apple were to relocate to the UK and successfully, under EU law, locate the VAT payments in the UK, it could very easily wipe out the entire national budget deficit.

So why would we not give them a very sweet tax deal?

The small taxpayer will always get shafted. This is simple. When the redistribution of wealth happened and it was reduced from 90% in the hands of the wealthy to just over 50% in the hands of the small tax payer, the taxes went with the money. But the influence was diluted amongst millions of people who couldn't make up their minds to vote for a low tax party so long as they have a hole in their backsides.

This isn't nirvana. You don't get to share out half the wealth then expect those who you took it from to foot the tax bill for those you gave it to. It doesn't happen.

The EU is playing anti competition protectionist rules through bending or outright breaking of the WTO accords. Oddly enough I happen to think that this is wrong.

It is no mistake that the CETA agreement includes brand new trade courts which are not answerable to the institutions of the EU and can make decisions that the institutions of the EU cannot challenge or change. It is no wonder that the Belgians didn't like it, they rely on the EU anti competitive stance to keep their country afloat.

If that's not clear enough, then I don't know what is.

You know we talk about trying to get the reality of the news from other sources, Russia, China, other non EU or western aligned news media.

This is one of those cases where we need to look beyond the "obvious", no matter what our political affiliations are.