EU's Vestager Appeals Court Veto of $15 Billion Apple Tax Order (reuters.com) 29
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on Friday appealed a court ruling dismissing her order to iPhone maker Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in Irish back taxes, a landmark case in the European Commission's crackdown against sweetheart tax deals. From a report: The Luxembourg-based General Court in July scrapped the Commission's 2016 ruling, saying that EU competition enforcers had not met the requisite legal standard to show that Apple had enjoyed an unfair advantage. Vestager said the case was important, a sign that her drive to get multinationals pay their fair share of taxes would continue unabated. "The General Court judgment raises important legal issues that are of relevance to the Commission in its application of State aid rules to tax planning cases," she said in a statement.
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The money in question would go to Ireland, not to the EU and not to Vestager personally.
The important part is at the end of the article. (Score:2)
The important part is at the end of the article:
Vestager has three ongoing tax cases, Ikea’s and Nike’s deals with the Netherlands, as well as Huhtamaki’s agreement with Luxembourg.
Luxembourg makes money off of offering deals to companies so that they can avoid taxes. Their courts will obviously try to stop any attempt by the EU to stop this practice, since they will have Luxembourg cases coming up soon.
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The General Court is not a Luxembourg court though. It just happens to be physically in Luxembourg., The EU does not have a non-state bit of land like Washington D.C. in the US, so it cannot be in neutral territory.
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Fair Share (Score:2, Interesting)
EU already obtains considerable revenue from import tax/tariffs and sales/VAT. So if we're going to talk about fairness to consumers maybe it's time to explore these double and triple taxation schemes.
Re:Fair Share (Score:5, Informative)
In the tax and accounting world "fair share" is whatever the law requires and not a penny more. If Vestager wants more tax revenue she should petition to revise the tax law rather than trying to pursue arbitrary actions in court.
The Commission is actually arguing that Ireland did not collect "whatever the law requires" but granted illegal(!) tax breaks. Also, this is about income taxes, so none of the tax money will go to the EU.
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It’s their country. They they can pass whatever tax laws breaks they want.
Sure, and you can keep rotting animal carcasses in your back yard because it's your back yard and you can do in it what you want. That does not change the fact that sooner or later your neighbours are going get tired of the unbearable infernal stink and they are do something about it. Same applies to tax havens.
Re:Fair Share (Score:5, Informative)
It’s their country. They they can pass whatever tax laws breaks they want.
Actually, they can't. While there may be questions of whether or not they did anything illegal here, one thing that is not in question is that being a member of the EU comes with certain obligations and responsibilities, among them being a number of rules that affect a country's ability to hand out tax breaks. As you look through the EU's foundational documents, you'll find quite a few rules that more or less boil down to "you agree to play nice with other members of the EU when doing X because we recognize that we're stronger when we're working together", and Vestager is claiming that Ireland broke some of those rules when giving aid to Apple.
More specifically, Vestager is arguing that Ireland violated Article 107 Section 1 [europa.eu], which says that countries cannot provide aid that distorts or threatens to distort competition within the EU's internal market (i.e. you can't go around undercutting your neighbors). Whether that argument has merit is a question for the courts and others well-versed in the law, but there's no question that Ireland is bound by rules that limit the tax breaks they can give. The only question is whether those rules are applicable here.
Re: Fair Share (Score:1)
Re: Fair Share (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not ascribing value—good or bad—to the EU's choice to do things as they do. I'm merely explaining the basis for the allegations of illegal state aid.
Likewise, I'll point out that being unable to hand out certain types of tax breaks is not the same as being unable to differentiate. If what you're wanting to do is attract jobs to your country over another country, you might do so by having a better infrastructure in place to support the types of work you want to attract, by simplifying the bureaucratic processes that those sorts of businesses might regularly encounter, or by drawing and growing a pool of talent with relevant expertise so that the businesses you want to attract would have a source they could easily tap (e.g. build schools and universities offering relevant programs in your country).
I'm sure an entire country could think of far more creative ideas than these, but that's what I had off-the-cuff.
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What you described is uniformity and ubiquity.
When applied to people, one would be likely to describe it as "equality before the law" and not consider it a bad thing (unless you're an oligarch). Surely it could as well apply to countries.
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Actually, they can't.
They can: they're sovereign. They just don't get to be part of the EU if they do.
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While true, that's like being right about the fact that someone can murder someone else. Sure, you can, but not really.
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No not even slightly.
You can't opt out of the legal system, but you can opt out of the EU entirely peacefully.
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In the tax and accounting world "fair share" is whatever the law requires and not a penny more. If Vestager wants more tax revenue she should petition to revise the tax law rather than trying to pursue arbitrary actions in court.
As the US Republicans know, the courts are more important than the legislatures. What the law requires is determined solely by the court. If the final court of appeal determines that the interpretation of the law is the exact opposite of the explicit wording of a law, then only that court's opinion matters. And that's only if the court isn't lazy. Otherwise, the court could simply rule that the rule doesn't even exist because it violates some transcendental rule.
Luxembourg? (Score:2, Insightful)
The world capital of money laundering and tax evasion? And you say it upheld an appeal against paying tax? Shocked, I am. Shocked!
Yeah, yeah. The court isn't a Luxembourg court. But the people who work there spend all their working hours mixing with people and a culture that is all about screwing the taxpayer and rewarding the super-rich. It has an effect.
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The world capital of money laundering and tax evasion?
Lol, not even close. Shit man they rank behind the Netherlands. You want to really dodge taxes you need some crown territory like the Caymans or the Virgin Islands.
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Speaking from first hand experience... Obtaining a Payment Institution license in Luxembourg requires answering questions that aren't asked for a Banking license in The Netherlands. Obtaining an eMoney license in the UK is a literal walk in the walk compared to Luxembourg.
To be fair, on some of the money laundering and tax evasion lists, Luxembourg is ranked higher than Germany, the Netherlands, France or the UK. It's also apparently easier to create a untraceable shell company in the UK than in the Cayman
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The world capital of money laundering and tax evasion? And you say it upheld an appeal against paying tax?
I think you misspelled London [prospectmagazine.co.uk]
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The world capital of money laundering and tax evasion? And you say it upheld an appeal against paying tax?
I think you misspelled London [prospectmagazine.co.uk]
No. London is small beer compared to Luxembourg. Luxembourg doesn't even bother having laws against it.
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No. London is small beer compared to Luxembourg.
The UK is so mall beer that it's classified "higher risk" by FinCERN based on the amount of UK LC/LLC in the Suspicious Activity Reports they receive.
The last estimation I saw for money laundering in the eurozone is that it represents about 110 billion euro across member states. Per the UK police, there's 100 billion pounds laundered through the UK every year. [reuters.com] If this is a correct estimation, 1/6 of the world's dirty money is laundered in the UK.
Per the UK parliament, 100 billion pounds is probably just th [parliament.uk]
we don't like it when you follow the rules! (Score:2)
The knee-jerk reaction to this seems to be "We gave you breaks by making these loopholes to attract your business, and now we're not satisfied with the amount of money we're getting out of the deal, so now we're going to dispute the terms we agreed to!"
I'm not a big fan of loopholes, and it's a lot easier for someone to hate on a loophole when it's one that someone else can take advantage of when they can't, but I have even less patience for groups that try to cancel deals they've made when they find they d
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Partly true, escept you forget it's not Ireland doing this, it's the EU. Ireland, like Apple, are opposed to this order as well.
In effect, the EU is forcing Ireland to collect from Apple tax money it doesn't want to collect (insert joke about government and taxes here).
It's pretty much the only reason why Apple actually had a chance on the appeal - without Ireland's support Apple would've lost.
Ireland, of course, is in it because of the tax revenue and they know it's one of the few ways they have of attract
If the EU had any balls (Score:4)
So a bureaucrat vs independent court (Score:2)
As much as I dislike the "sweet" deals companies get, the EU standard is "having similar access" to all companies. That is a low bar, though.
And instead of fixing the rules, the bureaucrat is tying the courts to extract payment ex post facto. They did a mistake by allowing those rules in the first place, and now dragging this for almost a decade.
Maybe they would be more proactive in the future, instead the current practice of arbitrarily interpreting previous rules.