The European Commission has concluded that Luxembourg granted undue tax benefits to Amazon of around ^a‘not250 million. This is illegal under EU State aid rules because it allowed Amazon to pay substantially less tax than other businesses. Luxembourg must now recover the illegal aid.
Remember when Tim Cook lied about the EU only going after Apple because Apple is big? Apple’s illegal deal with Ireland is just one on a long, long list of illegal deals the EU is cracking down on.
Anyway, speaking of the 13 billion euro Apple stole from EU citizens:
The European Commission has decided to refer Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to recover from Apple illegal State aid worth up to ^a‘not13 billion, as required by a Commission decision.
[…]
Today, more than one year after the Commission’s decision, Ireland has still not recovered any of the illegal aid. Furthermore, although Ireland has made progress on the calculation of the exact amount of the illegal aid granted to Apple, it is only planning to conclude this work by March 2018 at the earliest.
The crackdown on these illegal tax deals hopefully only represents the first step in cracking down on the grotesquely questionable conduct of large technology (and other sectors) companies. Backroom deals between governments and powerful corporations so they can effectively avoid paying any taxes while the rest of us do our civic duty by paying our taxes to pay for our schools, roads, hospitals, police, firefighters, and so on are a travesty.
If Apple, Amazon, Google, and others want to make use of the juicy fruits of European welfare states, they better start paying their fair share.
If you want to crack down on someone, crack down on the countries making these deals.
Given that Ireland is not pursuing Apple with much vigor, it appears that Ireland is not unhappy with its deal.
EU government is giving off the aura of a pack of thieves after that ridiculous $2.7B fine against Google. Forget about the profits from that unit, that fine is much larger than the revenue that unit has generated in the last 10 years. Fines should be proportional to the crime committed.
Irrelevant. The tax deal is illegal, and Ireland is not a victim – it’s a perpetrator. Collecting the stolen money would basically mean Ireland is declaring itself guilty.
Edited 2017-10-04 12:21 UTC
This article has a broader view. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/21/european-commission-plan… It addresses how some of the EU member states want to be tax havens and are blocking EU wide tax policy.
Does it explains how Goldman & Sachs helped Greece to forge its accounts, thus leading to its collapse, while the bank flew away free of charges ? The EU is now itself on the edge of collapse, which proves its weak balance, and most of all its profound unsolidarity, what Germany have showed the World how unfair and imperialistic they can be.
The f–k it is. EU should collect this unpaid tax from Apple and NOT give it to Luxembourg, who orchestrated this tax fraud in the first place, but other EU members instead. Luxembourg now gets both the Apple jobs they ‘invested’ in and also the tax money they used for bargaining with.
I am thinking they initially wrote these laws like this to allow attempts at tax frauds without a risk of penalty if they got caught doing it. The EU is a fraud.
Edited 2017-10-04 15:17 UTC
The EU has no right of taxation at ALL, it is the member states. the EU is gladly not funded by taxation (yet at least, unless traitor Macron gets his wish through)
Funding of the eu comes from membership dues and grants by the member states.
Sad thing is that no company will pay this from their own money. It will roll back to the end customer with a higher tax calculation.
You can not blame a company for trying every LEGAL loophole to avoid taxes!
And if Ireland tells me, my plans are ok with them, who am I to doubt the Irish tax-bureau on that matter?
Our European governments are to blame – and only they!
If a local government official tell you it’s okay to give him favours, but the national/federal government finds out and prosecutes you for bribery, you’re still f–ked.
Apple paid an effective tax rate of 0.005%. It knew damn well what it was doing.
Edited 2017-10-04 13:48 UTC
Since there is no European Ministery of Finance or something like that, yes, every company has to deal with the local authorities in that matter.
And these are the only ones to blame.
Top 3 of European Tax-Avoiding-Helpers:
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Ireland
Edited 2017-10-04 19:57 UTC
As a fellow Dutch citizen.
Be careful what you wish for The Netherlands does a lot of deals themselves and is making good money with it. I think in the case of/for The Netherlands it is financially positive they do this.
It’s ethically not a great position to be in. Obviously.
I’m looking forward to this money actually benefitting us Europeans …
Ha
Haha
Aaah
As it should be. Corporations, if they claim to be great should pay their taxes since their conglomeration destroys small businesses and their tax, imiacting societies terribly.
This is why I come to tech blogs, to hear everyone’s opinions on taxes, how companies are evil or not evil and whether Ireland or The EU or Switzerland or Norway is correct. Thanks for all the useless bikeshedding guys. If I want to listen to people talk about how everyone should pay more taxes I’d move to California.
If it wasn’t for Apple and Amazon and General Electric and Google, I’d probably have a condominium in the Hamptons.
So glad this only happens in the EU! This NEVER happens here is the US. Everyone pays all of their taxes across the board.
… and the UK can give them a 15% tax rate then if they want. Any corporation tax income is better than none!
That would depend on whether those companies will be able to effectively trade with the EU from the UK after Brexit.
We’ll see if the UK has learned from the past.
As I understood it in the past they were spending more on subsidising these big companies than actually getting money from them.
I totally agree, but if I may say so it’s the EU that’s moving far too slowly.
A couple of weeks ago I read a report on this matter. Piaggio, maker of Vespa and the MP3 three-wheeled hybrid scooter, pays about ^a‘not11M in revenue taxes. Apple Google Amazon etc COMBINED pay the same amount.
I’m scared. We’re not citizens anymore, just customers.
Not that I am siding with Apple here, just nitpicking: Amazon is also big to this doesn’t disprove Cook’s narative.
Small companies don’t generally get to make lucrative under the table deals with sovereign state’s tax agencies. Cook’s rant is kind of like a billionaire complaining that yacht maintenance is an unfair burden that only affects people who own yachts.
And it’s not even right. The list of companies fined for the exact same dodgy tax deals is long, and contains mostly small European companies.