Madrajin

Exactly, this sort of tax avoidance is morally repugnant. Local businesses pay 20% or more in corporation tax depending on the EU country. By exploiting loopholes big multinational corporations have lowered their effective tax rate to less than 1%. Apple isn’t the only guilty party here and Ireland would rather take the 1% tax on profit that was really generated elsewhere in the EU than what they are morally entitled to which is nothing, so they allow these loopholes to continue to exist.

It really does provide an unfair advantage. It takes significant sum to set up all the relevant shell companies and accounting schemes to take advantage of such loopholes so smaller companies or those that only operate in one jurisdiction can’t do it. Even if they could it would still be morally wrong. 

Yay. Definitely getting the space grey mouse to match the MacBook Pro. 

Either that or it is just thinly veiled state sponsored domestic spying at its heart. 

lkrupp said:

Madrajin said:

Much as a love Apple’s products, this type of tax avoidance is morally repugnant. A move to tax on revenue will fix this shenanigans. Large multinationals have got away with paying almost no corporation tax in the same markets that domestic companies have to pay full dues for years.

Great. Much as you “love Apple’s products” are you willing to pay a higher price for them to cover those higher taxes? What? You think Apple and the others will simply absorb those higher taxes and not pass them on to you? You the consumer pay for everything or didn’t you know that? 

Do you take every tax deduction your are legally allowed to take? If you do then you are morally repugnant by your own standard.

As the director of a small business we pay corporation tax as it was intended. Almost all small companies do. It’s only large corporations that can afford to set up the shell organisations to shuffle profits from one country to another to artificially lower their tax burden in countries with lower tax rates. The crazy thing is that the U.K. has one of the lowest corporation tax rates in Europe. 

What is morally repugnant is that companies 1000 times smaller than Apple are paying more in taxes that support our services. Corporation taxes are higher than they could be because of this shit that huge companies like Apple pull by not contributing in proportion to their true profits.

When you look at Apple’s cash mountain it becomes obvious that they can afford to pay the same rate of tax as every local business does.

I don’t believe that Apple’s prices would increase significantly. It is a tax on profit, not revenue.

Much as a love Apple’s products, this type of tax avoidance is morally repugnant. A move to tax on revenue will fix this shenanigans. Large multinationals have got away with paying almost no corporation tax in the same markets that domestic companies have to pay full dues for years.