randominternetperson

anton zuykov said:

avon b7 said:

sog35 said:

mdriftmeyer said:

avon b7 said:

There is a lot of damage control in the different comments from Apple representatives.

I particularly take issue with the line that Apple paid all taxes legally due.

I think few people doubt that, but one of the potentially most damaging claims from the investigation was that Apple supposedly decided how much was taxable in the first place and then duly paid all taxes on that amount in completely legal fashion.

So  yes, what they are claiming is technically true, but behind that is the issue of companies deciding for themselves what to make available for taxation.

One would expect this kind of behaviour (which isn't limited to Apple) will change in the future in the EU as all the investigations conclude and rulings are made which will serve as the basis for new practices. Whether Apple is found to have received what amounts to state aid or not will be decided down the line, but the fact the investigation was formerly concluded and the summary made public has helped to shed more light on the inner workings of multi national companies.

Tim Cook attended different meetings in Ireland and Brussels with the EU team carrying out the investigation and knows first hand exactly what the case against Apple is based on. Some of those meetings were reportedly 'heated'.

With a little luck these kinds of investigations will lead to a fairer system in the future.

Apple invented this scheme in the pre-Jobs 2.0 era and was acting on it ever since. It is one of the most repugnant stunts of tax evasion the world over. Many conglomerates leveraged that stunt with Ireland and they should all pay duly for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

wrong.

change the tax law.  Apple followed the law.

The whole point is that the law must be interpreted when issues are so complex. If your tax affairs are relatively simple your tax return may be equally simple and legally clear cut.

However, if you design systems to exploit loopholes, grey areas or in some cases just don't enter the spirit of the law, then you may end up on the receiving end of a court or revenue body ruling with fines etc

Sure. The spirit of the law says that a company needs to be taxed and pay taxes according to the rules. Apple did. Now, if the rules were written in a shitty way to allow loopholes, you wrote shitty rules. But that is not the problem of that company.
BTW, you are "not allowed" to change those rules retroactively, affecting already taxed revenue. In principle, you can do that, but in practice - good luck with trying to keep business in your country, if you decide to go that route.

avon b7 said:

There is a lot of damage control in the different comments from Apple representatives.

I particularly take issue with the line that Apple paid all taxes legally due.

I think few people doubt that, but one of the potentially most damaging claims from the investigation was that Apple supposedly decided how much was taxable in the first place and then duly paid all taxes on that amount in completely legal fashion.

So  yes, what they are claiming is technically true, but behind that is the issue of companies deciding for themselves what to make available for taxation.

One would expect this kind of behaviour (which isn't limited to Apple) will change in the future in the EU as all the investigations conclude and rulings are made which will serve as the basis for new practices. Whether Apple is found to have received what amounts to state aid or not will be decided down the line, but the fact the investigation was formerly concluded and the summary made public has helped to shed more light on the inner workings of multi national companies.

Tim Cook attended different meetings in Ireland and Brussels with the EU team carrying out the investigation and knows first hand exactly what the case against Apple is based on. Some of those meetings were reportedly 'heated'.

With a little luck these kinds of investigations will lead to a fairer system in the future.

red oak said:

$1.8 billion of their $6.5 billion in "profit" was from a massive tax write-off of their mobile business.  Almost one third of the reported "profit".  That is big thing to miss here

Everyone is fawning over Microsoft.  It's PE is double Apple's

Ridiculous

lkrupp said:

Time to break the tech companies up, even though they are not breaking the law, just getting too powerful it would seem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/is-big-tech-too-powerful-ask-google.html

I'm not a big fan of Robert Reich, but the argument is that Google, Amazon and other may in fact be breaking the law (antitrust laws specifically) but are shielded from scrutiny thanks to their political clout.

His argument that "the little guy" has no way to break into the market is rather silly since companies like Facebook, Uber, Tesla, were able to grow from nothing to major firms in the blink of an eye.  I wouldn't bet money on the proposition that Facebook will be the dominant social media platform 10 years from now.  They could be or they could be this generation's AOL.

"In total, Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP ... and employ 28.2 million people worldwide."

Interesting.  Presumably from the US population of ~300 million, there are 150-200 million workers.  So two thirds of GDP is created by < 28 million workers and the remaining one third is created by 120-200 million workers?  Who knew that the biggest companies were so much more efficient than everyone else.