Yeah....this is the bottom line to the ruling....Ireland never had the right to grant tax deals like this....ONLY the EU could have granted this (by EU rules).
But here’s the funny thing. Not only is Google in trouble there....but they are also in trouble in Luxembourg as well....as are fifty other American companies who got sweetheart deals through Luxembourg about a decade ago.
So, let’s look six months ahead.....some Irish dimwits decide to go for back taxes. The only option left for Google is to hope like heck that Trump is elected and immediately fixes the deal to allow US companies to bring their profits home, and then quietly pack up to leave Europe, period. Bring the jobs back to the US and give the US some portion of the profits that they should have gotten each single year.
As for the EU....they might want to ask how they can create jobs out of thin air....especially if the trade agreement is halted.
Well, I think BREXIT will come into play here. The EU has no authority over tax policy. This is specifically spelled out in the EU treaty. They do have anti-trust authority. So they are using anti-trust as a backdoor to control tax policy.
The high EU courts are going to decide whether or not anti-trust trumps sovereign tax authority. If so, I think there will be more countries leaving the EU. And there will certainly be more companies leaving the EU. I suspect they will go to England, or back to Bermuda.
well, Apple storing the money in Ireland hardly created half a dozen jobs (not including the sales jobs etc). Also, as I noted above, the problem is that the US double taxes money earned abroad.