tenly

It's obviously impossible to have an objective discussion on this taxation issue since so many people are letting their hate for the US, their hate for corporations or their hate for Apple cloud their judgements.

As a publicly owned company, it is Apples responsibility to their shareholders to (legally) minimize expenses wherever possible.  This includes their tax burden.  If a legal tax strategy existed - and Apple chose not to employ that strategy because "corporations should pay more", shareholders would be screaming for Tim Cooks head on a platter.

Ensuring that corporations pay their fair share is the responsibility of the governments who write the tax laws.  The discounts and deductions that people refer to as loopholes are there for a reason.  If they weren't, they would be closed as soon as soon as they were discovered.  The tax breaks that are given to corporations are carefully considered by the countries that offer them.  The value in having a corporation select your country can't always be measured in the number of dollars a corporation hands over as tax revenue.  Some countries recognize that having a corporation select them for their HQ or factory provides other benefits to that country - and these benefits are valuable enough that your elected officials have determined that it's worth giving that company a tax break to entice it to settle there instead of taking their operations to another country.

Apple - and the other corporations that are being targeted for back taxes are the victims yet there are posters on this thread that act like they are the villains.  Ireland offered incentives to the corporations so that they would establish a presence in Ireland.  In good faith, the companies all agreed to the terms and honored their commitments.  If the deal was illegal, Ireland is at fault and should be responsible for the shortfall.  By entering into the agreement, Ireland should be responsible for making up the difference.

Given the way this is playing out, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Ireland and the EU have actually colluded to extort these foreign companies.

There so much more that I could say to convince a rational, objective person of the injustice that is being perpetrated here - but there don't seem to be many on this thread who are rational and objective however there is an abundance of hate and prejudice - and they have already convicted the corporations while giving the Irish a pass and sided with the EU whom are clearly persecuting these companies.  

I do hope that all of the affected companies band together and exit Ireland and the EU en masse after this is all over.

gwydion said:

tenly said:

So, hang on a sec...there are so many contradictions in this thread that I'm having trouble understanding what actually happened....

It is my understanding that there were no closed door negotiations between Apple and the Irish government and that Apple designed and complied with the existing, published, Irish Tax rules, rates and procedures....  Is that not true?

The tax breaks were offered to only some companies and in a secret way

That definitely wasn't my understanding - and it does change things a little - but only a little.  Ireland is essentially an "authorized representative" of the EU and as such, any agreements they enter into - should be binding.  Consider this analogy we can all understand and tell me how you would react - let's say we are planning a wedding and we select a JW Marrriott hotel for the reception.  We strike up a conversation with the hotel manager and we negotiate a $1500 discount on the price of the ballroom/catering package because we promise to buy 100+ rooms for the night of the wedding to put up our out of town guests.  We follow through with the wedding - we honor our commitment to purchase 105 rooms.  We encourage our guests to book their rooms with the JW even though there is a Hilton directly next door that is half the cost!  But we keep our promise and that hotel does too.  We pay the discounted price for the ballroom and all is well.  Everybody is happy. So happy in fact that you book annual events at the same property and each year you encourage your guests to purchase their rooms from the more expensive Marriott because the hotel manager gives you a discount on the meeting rooms/catering.  BUT THEN --- out of the blue - 5 years after the initial wedding - you get a phone call from Marriott International explaining to you that their hotel manager actually did not have the authority to discounts the conference rooms you had rented and that you would now be required to retroactively pay the full price (plus interest) on all of your events over the past 5 years!

I don't think that a single one of you would understand Marriott Internationals position and be willing to pay the retroactive charges.  Especially since the hotel enjoyed the benefit in revenue that they received when you fulfilled your side of the agreement and purchased large blocks of rooms for each event!  And I also don't think you would change your mind if they explained that other people whom had their weddings and events at the same venue did not receive any discount - so really you're just paying your fair share anyhow.

This is exactly what is being demanded of Apple.  Internally within the EU - there should be an approval process in place to ratify/approve any "special" agreements - and if Ireland chooses to bypass that process - they should be held liable.  At the very, very least - the EU should not be allowed to go retroactive for more than a year.  If they can't be bothered to review the special arrangements being offered to certain large corporations within a year of the payment being charged/collected - it's pure and simple negligence on their part - or more than that collusion and deceit.  If the government knows that they can retroactively change the agreement going back 7 or more years - it's in their best financial interest to "let it slide" that long lest the companies move their operations to another jurisdiction!  It's slimey, it's corrupt, it's unethical and it's fraudulent.  Its criminal.

gatorguy said:

tenly said:

So, hang on a sec...there are so many contradictions in this thread that I'm having trouble understanding what actually happened....

It is my understanding that there were no closed door negotiations between Apple and the Irish government and that Apple designed and complied with the existing, published, Irish Tax rules, rates and procedures....  Is that not true? 

There were documents related to the negotiations that were revealed in the US Senate inquiry a couple years ago. Those indicated it was essentially done "behind closed doors".

Well, I can see how that would possibly change things a little - possibly even a lot - depending on how big a difference there is between the public rates and rules and in the actual deal that Apple walked away with.  But again - I would think that the public rules, rates and policies in place would set another "floor" to any retroactive amounts owed.

SpamSandwich said:

gwydion said:

No, EU is not changing the law. Another case of not understanding what the case is about

The EU is forcing Ireland to comply.

So, hang on a sec...there are so many contradictions in this thread that I'm having trouble understanding what actually happened....

It is my understanding that there were no closed door negotiations between Apple and the Irish government and that Apple designed and complied with the existing, published, Irish Tax rules, rates and procedures....  Is that not true?  I thought that the "tax strategies" (as opposed to "dodges") that Apple employed were public, well known and available to anybody (such as other large corporations).

if that's true - I would think that there should be some sort of culpability on the EU as a whole to review the tax laws of its member countries within a reasonable timeframe and provide notice to all companies with a tax presence in the offending country that they are committing a crime.  Something as important as this, with such far reaching ramifications should be a top priority for the EU taxation folks - but it appears that they were content to just "let things slide" for an unacceptably long time in the hopes of getting a larger pay-day when they finally decide to move forward and re-write the rules.  They knew that if they moved quickly - those "offending" corporations would move their operations to the country with the next most favourable tax laws.  I think the way the EU has handled this is corrupt, unethical and possibly even criminal.  Further - the corporations have all operated in good faith, followed the laws as they were written and brought significant financial benefit to Ireland and the EU during the course of this arrangement - and if this financial windfall for the Irish government and the EU is found to be obtained under false pretences - those windfalls should be used to offset any additional tax burden that arises out of the fraud they perpetrated on Apple and the other corporations.

Finally - the courts should be forced to  recognize that Apple and these other large corporations would not have done business in Ireland had the new rules been known.  They would have used the second most favourable country for minimizing their taxes - therefore any financial obligation these companies are subjected to should be limited to the amount they WOULD have had to pay in the next most favourable country.  Any ruling that attempts to extort more $ than that from these companies whom are actually VICTIMS of a fraud perpetrated by one of the EU's own member countries would just reek of collusion and itself would be extremely corrupt and unethical.   The EU needs to just back off.  Evaluate the tax rules and determine if they are fine or illegal.  If illegal - they need to APLOGIZE to the countries whom invested in Ireland, moved offices and jobs into the company and then they need to advise these companies that the rules are changing and they have 1 year grace to restructure their companies (if they so desire).  Any talk of retroactive payments should be held between the EU and the Irish Government - and not the victims of the fraud.  Maybe the corporations should band together and declare sovereignty.  If the EU tried to pull this shit with the government of another country, it would be seen as an extremely hostile and aggressive act if not an outright act of war.  Shame, shame on the EU for allowing this situation to happen in the first place, let alone the direction they have chosen to take to resolve things.

It's almost definitely the HDMI-CEC and it's also going to be almond impossible to troubleshoot.  Ever manufacturer is responsible for their own implementation of the HDMI-CEC standard.  They can't even agree on what to call the feature.  It is known by many names such as EasyLink, AquosLink, VieraLink, AnyNet+, CompuLink, SimpLink, RuncoLink, NetCommand and many more.  There have also been many different versions of the specifictation released/defined over the years.

Its not unusual or surprising that some combinations of devices exhibit problems like this - what's surprising is that the technology EVER works!

If all you've got set up in your room is an ATV and a TV, I doubt you'd ever see a problem.  But start adding other devices into the mix such as Receivers, Cable Boxes, Blue Ray players, game systems and other streaming boxes, it becomes more and nor likely that incompatibilities will exist and/or rogue HDMI-CEC signals will be sent by some of the devices or the correct signal will be sent but to the wrong device!

If you are experiencing the problem and it is annoying you too much to just live with, you should do as others have suggested and disable HDMI-CEC by all its names on all of your devices - or you could spend hours troubleshooting your set up to see if you can determine which device or scenario is responsible for the conflicts in your set up but it is unlikely that anyone else will be able to help you by sharing their findings because of the millions of different possible combinations of devices.   A good starting point might be to back out (disconnect) everything except your Apple TV and your TV and see if the problem still exists.  If it doesn't, start adding in additional devices one at a time until the problem re-manifests itself.  When it does - you'll know that the last component you connected is the one that triggers the behaviour.  But even that won't necessarily be definitive.  That device on its own - may actually work properly and only causes a problem when hooked up in conjunction with a specific combination of other devices.

In any case - I very much doubt that any class action law suit will be approved since it will be almost impossible to nail down a specific class that all have the same combination of devices that exhibit the same negative behaviour.  It will also be very difficult to prove that the fault is caused by the AppleTV4.