Multi-billion Apple windfall puts Ireland in unusual bind

Bollocks to Apple and the US government whining about Apple actually paying some taxes. Everybody pays except the corporations.

Apple is overpriced and overrated. Get your checkbook out.

Apple hides its money all over the world, thereby avoiding paying its fair share of taxes.

Bollocks to Apple and the US government whining about Apple actually paying some taxes. Everybody pays except the corporations.

Ireland has two choices, loot taxes from Apple, or leave them alone. Looting Apple will motivate Apple to remove much of their operations from Europe, and this means the loss of a considerable amount of jobs, not to mention the taxes they already pay. The money Ireland gains in this "windfall" may end up costing Europe's economy many times that amount in the long run.

The problem with Ireland, the rest of Europe, and all of the developed world is not that countries don't collect enough taxes, but that they spend too much. And the more money you give these governments, the more irresponsibly they spend it.

BBC says US is protesting this because, for one thing, if Apple gets billed by Ireland they're likely to offset their US taxes accordingly (deduct their Irish tax from their US-taxed earnings).

So that's what helped Apple rake those record-breaking profits.

Ask the Irish taxpayers if they want the tax money since they've the burden of paying tax for the money needed to run the government services. ("More than seven out of 10 people in a national radio poll also thought that Dublin should take the money, piling pressure on the government.")

Ireland has to be fair, foreign or domestic - either charge every business the 0.005% tax it charges Apple (that's $50 tax for every million made), or charge Apple the same 12.5% tax that's normally charged everyone else, including its own domestic businesses. As long as it's the same, Apple or not (but of course Ireland would never think of charging everyone just 0.005% tax).

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/how-apples-irish-subsidiaries-paid-a-0005-percent-tax-rate-in-2014.html

Apple can't leave Ireland because Ireland is its gateway to the European trade union market. If Apple goes outside an EU country, then it won't have the same free access to the EU market.

Sorry Apple, but you're just going to have to pay taxes like the rest of us.

The Irish corporate tax rate has been widely criticised by Ireland’s EU partners, while France is a leading critic of a race-to-the-bottom among EU member states to cut tax and social conditions to attract foreign investment.

Well, yeah. Apple paid something like less than 1% in taxes. For people who want the US to lower our rates to bring business back, we'd have to be around 0%. It really is a race to the bottom, and it's going to get worse. Once their tax rates are 0 they will dip into other people's (and government's) pockets for more incentives.

How many Irish policymakers are now secretly yearning for their own version of a "Brexit." LOL.

In today's borderless globalized economy, govts have to give big corporations everything they want, otherwise they'll just run away and re-locate elsewhere.

Apple is just playing the same game on a bigger scale in the name of "globalization" that many large companies have been doing for years, avoiding taxes. Professional sports teams have been also playing that game for years: In the wacky world of sports it was usually "build us a new stadium, give us tax breaks and some other concessions or we'll move to some other city where politicians are foolish enough to do that." In the corporate world it was "give us tax breaks and some subsidies or we'll move to China or Mexico or some such place," after they got what they wanted they would usually move their operations anyway.

I was on a ferry out of Dublin about six years ago, and met a couple of guys hanging out on deck...I asked about work in the country, and they IMMEDIATLY went off about how impossible itis to find a job, in fact, as soon as the " Curtin " came down from East Germany, that was IT, everybody flooded out and undercut jobs for locals. In fact, they said I would bet you NONE of the crew on the ship were Irish, they were clearly NOT. YES; Apple should PAY the TAX!

Ireland sighed up for this when they joined the EU so Yes Apple gotta pay its due as most other Corporations its tax evasion simple as that and if you support Apple you support crime.

Also most social plans in Ireland are dreadfully under funded and they are trying to get money everywhere they can but they dont dare ask their fair share from the plutocratic overlords or else they might move away but they wont because Europe is the biggest domestic market on the planet and they want that money but they will have to work for like everybody else.

Just listened to a long interview with an Irish venture capitalist. He points out Ireland is not the only low tax, tech friendly nation within 7 hours flying time from east coast of the US.

They are not going to allow that money to be paid.