Should Ireland take the USD 15 billion in tax from Apple?

The EU ruled that lowering Apple's tax payments to 0.0005% is illegal under EU state aid rules which do not allow direct subsidies to select companies, as this could jeopardize free market functionality.

As a result, the EU ordered Ireland to reclaims USD 15 billion in non-paid taxes from Apple.

The Irish government has vowed to fight the ruling in order to let Apple keep the money.

Should Ireland take the money? It could be used for the benefit of e.g. poor Irish people or to build affordable housing or infrastructure or school investments.

>this thread will get heaps of replies

It'll be bad for Direland in the long run, as other multinationals may leave for another tax heaven. Estonia and the Netherlands are already spreading their legs.

It'll be good for the rest of Europe, as Apple will no longer receive a passive subsidy at the cost of native tech firms.

>Irish government is fighting tooth and nail for the right to be cucked by corporations

>nationalising things is wrong

this
It would be better in the long run to attract multinationals into Ireland especially post brexit when many will need to move their European base. That being said 13 billion is very tempting could take a chunk of the national debt

>Should Ireland take the money? It could be used for the benefit of e.g. poor Irish people or to build affordable housing or infrastructure or school investments.
Their EU obligations means that $15billion will be divvied up to all other member nations (with bonuses given to the poorer ones and those who accept more refugees). Whatever is left will be a pittance, with the bonus effect of having all other corporations pull the plug on their Ireland tax shelters from here on.

Farage was right. You lose much of your sovereignty for membership. They should consider their own "Irexit".

It is more of a scam of other nations, not so much a "nationalising things" thing.

>EU vs Apple
Can they both lose?

On the one one hand, it's the EU encroaching on a nation's sovereignty. On the other, it's a corporation exploiting a corrupt government.

Is there the option to just torch everyone involved?

>0.0005%
Trickle down economics yooo
The jews did this

>The EU ruled
why are they so insistent on sticking their noses on other peoples businesses?

what the fuck is their problem?

This is incorrect. It has already been confirmed that all money would remain in the Irish hands. Actually, with interest, the tax bill could reach USD 25 billion and seriously lower the Irish massive national debt.

>Should Ireland take the money?

No, because they explicitly fucking agreed to charge them basically nothing in taxes in exchange for them doing business there, and taking the money afterwards is going to guarantee no business is ever going to want to move there because a sudden "haha fuck you, we're actually going to retroactively tax you for years of previous business!" after they move there could be crippling or ruinous for many companies.

>It could be used for the benefit of e.g. poor Irish people or to build affordable housing or infrastructure or school investments.

Welfare does not benefit the poor, it makes them dependent and it's why you see enormous increases in single motherhood and other societal decay in western societies. Stop. Fucking. Subsidizing. Poor. People.

Schools are already marxist brainwashing centers, and throwing money at them has literally no increase in their results for children (even by shitty government standards and methodologies where they set the bar low to begin with).

Infrastructure is fine in terms of road, and other taxes cover it adequately. If you're talking about leftist obsessions like "light rail" you need to fucking kill yourself.

>why are they so insistent on sticking their noses on other peoples businesses?

The EU states banded together in a free market and removed tariffs and non-tariff barriers. As a result, Apple can create a system in which it sells hundreds of billions worth of merchandise in all of Europe and pay zero tax anywhere... except in Ireland.

This system only works if certain rules are upheld, one rule is to not grant state aid to one particular company while not granting it to another company (for instance HTC or Samsung). Apple not paying any taxes in Europe as a whole, allows them to unduly lower prices compared to its major competitors which do not get this tax break.

This is why the EU said, Ireland favored Apple for undue reasons and needs to claim back the non-tax payments as "state aid".

apple is a joke company
if they went bankrupt and just vaporized literally nothing would happen other than people loosing their jobs

>No, because they explicitly fucking agreed to charge them basically nothing in taxes

EU law trumps Irish law. Apple knew that from the start. EU law says you need to pay at least 12.5% in tax.

Yes, because I hate Ireland, I hate the irish people, and am more than happy to let them destroy their country's image, goodwill and faith. I hope that not a single company does business there for 100 years, and it turns into a dirt farming shithole.

so... every company on earth

Ireland should take a shit on the EU and it's "laws"


thats what paddi should do.

I dont know who is jewing who. Apple and the eu are both run by jews

Hopefully the free state starts using the pound again and drifts away from the EU, had enough of that Euro shite.

No just a simple observation. They and we have these problems because of my greentext. How thick is that mentality

Can't they just take the money and then issue a full refund?

>Ireland - The sweatshop of the western world

It is their heritage to be dominated by others, can't blame them for defending their culture.

These mics are tryin real hard to lend credence to the potato-nigger meme.

>waaahhh my tax haven got disrupted

Fuck Apple and any other multinational that is as equally unethical. You want to play in a land without paying your due obligation? Then I heard Somalia is the land of milk and honey for zero regulation/taxes.

Have fun.

>Not giving money to governments is unethical

>a leaf

Why don't you go back to the red ensign and stop pretending to be a country.

they'll be allowed in post brexit UK

Anything which interferes with Apple and similar globalist megacorps is fine with me. Those fuckers are evading billions of Euro in taxes every single year, and at the same time killing local businesses who can't compete with them.

Playing dress up and make believe is too much fun though, we don't want to go back to reality.

>posting on darpanet

...

Do you use schools, hospitals or roads?
Then yes, not giving money to governments is unethical.

What a surprise German/EU fag sticking his nose in other peoples business

>I want all the benefits of being in a functioning society but none of the responsibilities

You should skip jury duty and avoid signing up for selective service as well.

Fight the man, maaaaaaannnn.

>Can't they just take the money and then issue a full refund?
No, the whole point is that Ireland manipulated the free market by favoring one company over competitors thus unfavorably reducing sales of e.g. HTC.

> raise your taxes because we can't compete with low taxes
That's the point you fucking idiot

This is why one world governments are a bad idea. Even if it turns out to be a perfect democracy. Democracy is still mob rule. Democracy allows for censorship and for rights to be taken away

Good on you, Ireland

>they'll be allowed in post brexit UK
How does that help them? They like Ireland because that allows them to pay zero taxes in Germany.

Post-Brexit of they pay 0% taxes in the UK, that is fine for UK sales, but not sales in Germany. It is called the 'single market' for a reason.

They shouldn't.
It would be a short term gain that will be pissed up by the government, and in the long term business will no longer trust Ireland.

i.e. The public will not gain anything for it except over-priced government works. You can guess the contracts for any works will be between buddies in government, where charging 50 million dollars for things like pouring cement is approved.

What if the EU, as a result, just banned tax haven policies? Then Ireland just lost out on a big amount of cash AND can't lure foreign companies to Ireland any more with tax fraud promises.

Ireland should absolutely take the tax. Fuck Apple.

>(with bonuses given to the poorer ones....)

What???

GIBS ME DATS :DDD

>implying things like this arent exactly why countries want out of the EU

>le schools, hospitals, and roads argument

You mean the government and their buddies would lose the cash, it's not like the people would see much of it. But I'll bite: Assuming the people get a little something from the 15B like the odd community swimming centre or after-school art workshop, then we could say it was a bad decision in the short-term - however - there would be many more changes happening in Europe as a result of banning tax havens. Ireland would be in a better position to recover than the rest of Europe as companies migrate to Hong Kong and Singapore since they would have been weened off the tax-haven teat in the most abrupt way. Tough environments make people toughen up or smarten up.

Absolutely not.

The Irish government is doing the right thing by putting downward pressure on taxation globally.

Apple will just leave their country anyway, and they won't get any revenue at all.

>>implying things like this arent exactly why countries want out of the EU

How am I implying this? The only reason Apple could pay 0.0005% of its profits achieved in all of the EU, is because Ireland defrauded the other EU states by violating EU Rules.

If Ireland wants out of the EU and only wants to charge 0% tax, fine - but in that case Apple wouldn't care about Ireland, because it is not interested in the sales in the Irish market, it is interested in avoiding taxes in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland etc. It is the single market that allows that ... but only if certain rules are complied with including a minimum 12.5% corporate income tax and state aid principles.

>This is incorrect. It has already been confirmed that all money would remain in the Irish hands.
Right up until they change the terms.

Come the fuck on, a corrupt bureaucracy like the EU run literally by jews, and tons of fucking money up for grabs like this?

No fucking way they'll let Ireland keep it, you naive gullible fool.

>Apple will just leave their country anyway, and they won't get any revenue at all.
Where would Apple go? Seriously, where? Ireland has the lowest taxes in the EU and the reason Apple is in Ireland is to reduce its taxes paid across the EU to 0.

>No fucking way they'll let Ireland keep it, you naive gullible fool.

You don't know anything about EU competition law. This ruling was by the EU Commission on "state aid principles" as part of anti-corrupt competition laws. These rulings are standard and come in every week. It is just that this ruling has been unprecedented in scale. ALL these rulings say that the state aid has to be paid to the EU state, not the EU.

Apple doesn't need to be in an EU country to avoid tax from EU countries.

It doesn't pay any tax here either (despite the government wanting otherwise) and we have no semi-political union with Ireland.

No, Apple and all the other companies will leave causing huge levels unemployment, we go into recession and the EU rapes us AGAIN

>Apple doesn't need to be in an EU country to avoid tax from EU countries.
What? Yes, Apple does need to be in an EU country to avoid taxes in the EU. Unless it stops selling its products in the EU, it is required to pay taxes on profits from sales of their products.

>It doesn't pay any tax here either (despite the government wanting otherwise) and we have no semi-political union with Ireland.
That is Australian law. In the EU, things are different. If you import 50 million iPhones to the EU single market and sell them for 20 billion, while your production costs were only 10 billion, the EU says "you just had a 10 billion profit, pay taxes."

Ireland should reinvest the tax money in Apple, and make it a pseudo-official policy to invest any taxmoney gained through this European change in tax policies into the corporation it is extracted from.

It would be worth it just for the butthurt it would cause in Brussels if nothing else

>governments are saints and are taxing me according to real costs

The government doesn't serve its people, so only pay what you have to because whatever wealth you save is what you'll need to help yourself tomorrow.

GIBS ME THE MONIEZ WANKER BANKERS! MOAR NEETBUX

WE NEEDZ THE MONIEZ FO DEM PROGRAMZ

>It would be worth it just for the butthurt it would cause in Brussels if nothing else

How would Brussels be butthurt? If Ireland wants to buy 25 billion USD worth of shares in Apple, why shouldn't they? Should have done this 13 years ago! Ireland would be completely debt free by now and own half of Apple.

I'd have to look further into the EU tax code, but it does seem that Ireland is breaking rules if the minimum rate is 12.5%.

That being said, even though it's breaking rules, Ireland is doing the right thing. The EU should abolish corporate taxation anyway, or better, abolish itself.

It's another example of how other nations in the EU do their own and get away with it, while the UK has always tried to do things in the spirit of hints and gets treated like dirt. You have Frqnce passing discriminatory burka bans and ignoring illegal immigrants trying to break out their country into ours, you have Germany just taking it upon themselves to let millions of migrants swarm into central Europe. Instead of playing ball with the rest of the EU, Ireland make themselves a tax haven so that all EU Apple profits so through them, so they tax a little bit make a good chunk of money. Now the EU want Apple to pay up fully and Ireland want to keep it all? The only reason Apple put all money through your country is because you were cheap, the tax money should be spread out as it would have been if they hadn't undercut everyone with their cheap deal.

Despite this, when Britain asks the EU properly for changes of any sort it gets thrown in our face. We should have just ignored EU rules and done what we like, it's the pattern of what others do. Asking gets you nothing, and leaving the EU makes them throw toys out the pram because you won't stay to be their whipping boy.

Isn't it very simple.
If Ireland wants apple to stay in the country they shouldn't take the money. If they don't care about Apple or the biotech company jobs then they should take the money.

And?
Two wrongs

>If Ireland wants apple to stay in the country they shouldn't take the money.
What, why?

Apple has no alternative. There is no other EU country which has lower taxes. And they need Ireland in order to tax all profits they make in the EU close to 0.

For once I sadly have to say Ireland needs a Jewish finance minister...
You can fucking bet they would take the money then, although he's probably scheme it out of them
After that

>The EU should abolish corporate taxation anyway, or better, abolish itself.
I am 100% for that. The corporate income tax is the silliest thing anyone has ever come up with.

We need consumption taxes and a low flat tax (say 20%) on personal income above 50k regardless of the income source (be it inheritance, work, dividends, capital gains etc.)

They're Micking the rest of Europe.

The issue here is that Apple channeled all their Euro and African sales through Ireland and paid tax on the whole lot at the farcical rate the (((micks))) created for them. How does Sup Forums think this kind of tax avoidance should be fixed?

It's not about who's right but who's left.

Just like the battle between the left and right, the strongest group will decide the future.

If we all end up living in an open border world where transabled people marry their pansexual hamster that identifies as a cat then you'll know the right side wasn't strong enough.

It's a dog eat dog world, maple-chan.

International corporations should be taxed a higher rates in order to foster national competition instead of international monopolies.

DELETE THIS

Ireland doesn't have a choice. I'm in Northern Ireland and we're part of UK.
The EU decides what the Republic does. Not the Irish people.
My gf is in Co.Donegal. I'm in Co.Antrim. It's crazy - no border guards. Our passports are different.
I just drive my car a few miles and I'm supposed to be in a different country. I'm actually laghing as I type this.
Ireland is Ireland. There is no border. Eurocrats don't understand this.

UK just tells EU to fuck off. I wish the Republic would too.
Seriously, if I drive for 20 minutes you'd see an Irish flag on top of this post. The amount of smuggling that goes on between the north and the south is crazy.

Ireland should not take the $15B

No
The tax belongs to the EU not Ireland therefore it is for the Union to take in its entirety
Also fuck any faggot that gets to defend apple
Literally the largest company in the world and they skip out on doing their taxes despite already having moved to a tax haven

Netherlands isn't an option since it's a socialist shithole
Estie might be viable though

>EU
>free market

pick only one you retarded faggots

You've raped, murdered, and stolen from the Irish for literally over a thousand years.
You would have to be dense to think that at some point they wouldn't have adopted a fetish for it

>other peoples businesses
It is their business
Apple didn't pay their fucking taxes and just like Wesley Snipes they're going to pay for not doing it

>muh six million potatoes

Says the king of sticking Jew noses where it doesn't belong

>My gf is in Co.Donegal. I'm in Co.Antrim. It's crazy - no border guards. Our passports are different.
>I just drive my car a few miles and I'm supposed to be in a different country. I'm actually laghing as I type this.
>Ireland is Ireland. There is no border. Eurocrats don't understand this.

Actually, Eurocrats understand this very well. Which is why they will use it as a key strategy in the Brexit negotiations. For the UK to raise tariffs on the EU, it would have to put military borders up in Ireland.

I wonder how Jobs would've dealt with this.

>Implying they haven't
I'm directly blood related to Cromwell and even I can't deny they've been fucked over countless times
Be a cunt to someone who cares
Anglos are shit but it has nothing to do with my post now fuck off

He would have paid and shit his mouth
Every businessman worth their salt does because they know they lose more money doing anything else but

They pay there workers who spend money in the economy. They are providing jobs and capital. It in turn allows those workers to try and make their own business. They more than paid their fair share

>Netherlands isn't an option since it's a socialist shithole
Not for corporations my friend.
Why do you think so many multinational companies are incorporated here?

I am part Irish. Wanna dominate me tonight?

That was 400 of years ago. Probably everyone in modern day UK is "related" to Cromwell.

is the apple payment enough to push Ireland into "transfers" to other EU nations?

Is the farm subsidy and other payments just based off of singular market valuations?

>All these Americans suckin Tim Cuck's dick
Fuck Apple desu. For once I'm proud of what the EU has done and I hope Google and Amazon are the next ones.
Also, this pretty sums up the disgusting Irish position

Better than being cucked by the EU?

>Schools are already marxist brainwashing centers
umf that edge

I can't decide. On the one hand, I fucking hate Apple and seeing them bankrupted would bring me joy. On the other hand, I hate potato niggers and seeing them profit like the little bogjews they are makes me cringe.

>should the EU be allowed to change investment deals made by Ireland.

No

Apple employs a lot of people around the world and they already paid the tax that the eu offered

Does Apple even have employees in Ireland or is it just a tax haven?

To put it simply, if we hadn't given Apple the tax break, they wouldn't be here. So the €15 B does not exist. It was never "robbed" and we were never "cucked". We gave Apple a tax break to create a few thousand jobs and they've done a good job doing that.

So to take this false "unpaid" tax not only would be a disaster for our relations with Apple, but would be a slippery slope for all the other multinational companies set up her. And not only that, but it would a direct attack on our sovereignty and our right to set whatever taxes we like.

tl;dr EU out

Typical yank wanting to destroy countries one at a time

The government and opposition here are all socialists of differing scale. That 13 billion will all go to dem programs, social gimme gimme housing and probably gypsy caravan grants. The EU is an orwellian beuraucratic nightmare which is desperate to take more power from our Government on top of the power it took from us during the banking crisis. Apple pay fuck all tax, have a cult hipster image aroung the world but yet run slave labour workshops where the only way a worker can ever leave is through a tear in one of the suicide prevention nets. I work and pay taxes and I know that money will never help me. I dont give a fuck what happens the countries fucked either way.