uroshnor

sog35 said:

avon b7 said:

"selectively targets Apple"

Yes!

However, this is stating the obvious. This how they try to paint themselves as a victim in this process.

The reality is that they were 'selectively targeted' but along with a whole host of other companies. This should surprise no one. If you think tax evasion is being practised, you single out the biggest offenders first. It's the same all over the world. I may be wrong but I think there are around 300 companies currently under investigation.

Apple wasn't even the first in line. 

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5880_en.htm

Apple says it paid all tax 'legally due' but ignores one of the key complaints aimed at them by the EU: that Apple's accounting setup allowed it to decide how much it would make available for taxation. So if they decided to make $100 out of $100,000,000 available for taxation they would pay all tax legally due on that sum.

We will see how things play out.

10 years to late.

If EU though Apple was breaking the law they should have said something 10 years ago. Apple has bent over backwards over the last 10 years to make sure their recognition of taxes was correct. EU/Ireland always gave the stamp of approval. Until now.

You can't change the rules midstream. Going forward Apple will follow any tax guidance given by the EU, but they will not go back 10 years and change the past.

My understanding is the setup Apple uses in Ireland has been basically the same since 1979 or so. So you might argue that it's nearly 40 years.

unfortuately, in a lot of countries, tax agencies are allowed to reach back into the past and change the law (particularly when dealing with tax minimisation/evasion methods that might take years to properly investigate).

i think 10 years is just the EU cap, on how far back they are allowed to reach. 

gatorguy said:

sog35 said:

gwydion said:

sog35 said:

gwydion said:

Shocking, an advisor for one of the interested parts says that the ruling could be overturned in benefit of the part he is advisor.

or it could be common sense that you can't change laws on things that happenned 10 years ago

No law was changed

Yes it was. If it wasn't the EU would have charged Apple 10 years ago

No, it really wasn't. The Irish agreement was an exception to the standard corporate tax laws even if it was an allowable one. and while the EU's interpretation of the competition laws to deem them applicable to Apple's tax situation might be new, the laws themselves aren't. 

There is no agreement between Apple & Ireland.

Any multinational company could adopt a similar structure and achieve a somewhat similar tax result (its easier for a company selling goods (e.g. Apple), versus a company selling locally delivered services (like IBM or HP enterprise)

That is not acceptable, and the EU is right to want to change that situation , but they arguably don't have the legal authority to impose the outcome they are attempting to in this case (if Apple had an agreed exception to normal Irish tax law, they would have the leverage).

This is primarily a US company issue as the US is almost unique globally in that it attempts to tax company revenue regardless of where it was generated in the world. In Apple's case , goods made in country C, and sold in country B, are being assessed by country A as needing to have their profit being taxed in country A.

Apple has adopted a structure that gives it control of when it repatriates those profits to country A, and therefore when it pays tax on it.

What that means it that taxable income sits in offshore limbo, effectively paying no tax anywhere, until the US declares a tax holiday and it is repatriated.

Thus whole issue goes away if the US corporate tax rate is lowered , or the US enters into multi-lateral taxation agreements with other countries broadly (as many other countries have done), or the OECD comes up with some other option that the US signs on to (e.g. Adopting a convention bas d on concepts such as tax should be paid at point of revenue generation - i.e. where the finished goods are sold)

Tbe US government has refused to deal with this issue for 50+ years, other than congress voting about 3 times for tax holidays (which is really just kicking the can down the road).

The Trump "solution" will likely be lower US taxes, and possibly also declare a tax holiday. That's probably the worst of the 3 alternative options, but at least it's doing something.

One of the things that I've wanted to see is ports of board games (like Avalon Hill ,TSR and their peers) that use iOS multi peer networking, so everyone has their own screen. I think scrabble and monopoly do somethimg like this - IIRC Scrabble supports a mode where the iPad is the board everyone can see, but the private sets of letter tiles for each player are on each player's iPhone or iPod Touch.

I think AppleTV also opens this right up with the TV becoming the board everyone can see.

if you were playing "War in the Pacific" you'd need a really big TV, but you get the idea.

now if only someone would port "Freedom in the Galaxy" and not get sued by Disney (its a very good, asymmetric space opera game that's thematically a shameless Star Wars rip off)

The other thing it opens up with Game Centre is semi - virtual peer-peer , where if some of the participants are remote, they can still play on their own devices.

dick applebaum said:

cali said:

1.  If Apple is forced to manufacture in the US, also force the Chinese ripoff companies to do so. 

2.  Ban technology that infringe on American company's patents. 

Mmm...

It wouldn't surprise me if Sammy decided to manufacture phones in the US  just to one-up Apple.

They already do.

Thats why Samsung is on the GSA approved list for government purchase and Apple is not.

subbies said:

Fuck em I say. I'm with the only Australian bank that has adopted Apple Pay and I use it every time I make a purchase. Every shop in Australia accepts Apple Pay. 

Actually there's 33+ options in Australia now:

- AMEX card direct from AMEX. No PIN required for Apple Pay.

- ANZ cards. Visa cards require a PIN over $100. ANZ issued AMEX & Mastercard do not.

- a group of 30+ smaller banks, credit unions and building societies also now offer Apple Pay
(Defence Bank, Police Credit Union etc). Same PIN constraints as ANZ.

ANZ has said they've had their largest growth ever in issuing cards, since they started Apple Pay, but they haven't said anything much more detailed than that.

The commercial pressure on the big 3 holdouts will make it inevitable, especially if the final ruling is much the same as the draft.

It's really just hubris/arrogance/greed/bullying/not-invented-here behaviour. CBA had recently invested heavily in their own proprietary stack and it does seem like they are miffed that Apple Pay basically demolished them from an ease of use perspective.