Apple wins fight over $14.9 billion tax grab in blow to EU

MacDailyNews ^ | July 15, 2020

[Swordmaker]

Apple won its court fight over a record 13 billion-euro ($14.9 billion) Irish tax grab in a crushing blow to European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s crackdown on preferential fiscal deals for companies.

Stephanie Bodoni and Aoife White for Bloomberg:

Apple EU tax.
Image: Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition

While the EU General Court’s ruling can still be appealed, judges delivered a stinging attack on the European Commission for failing to show “to the requisite legal standard” that Ireland’s tax deal broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage.

.

“The commission’s intent seemed to be a political one: to punish Apple for its overall tax planning, rather than to reach a result that accorded with the legal or economic position,” Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer with Clifford Chance said in a statement. “The court has, quite rightly, followed the law and not any wider political objectives.”

The Cupertino, California-based company had argued the EU wrongly targeted profits that should be taxed in the U.S. and “retroactively changed the rules” on how global authorities calculate what’s owed to them. The Irish finance ministry said the nation “has always been clear that there was no special treatment provided to the two Apple” units in the EU’s state-aid case.

Valentina Pop and Sam Schechner for The Wall Street Journal:

Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of competition at the commission, said she would “carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps” and vowed to continue investigations into national tax deals with corporations to establish whether they constitute illegal subsidies.

The 2016 decision against Apple earned Ms. Vestager the nickname “tax lady” from President Trump… The decision is a blow to Ms. Vestager…

Apple and Ireland on Wednesday applauded the annulment of the tax case. Ireland reiterated that it gave no special treatment to Apple, and said that the company had paid taxes according to “normal Irish taxation rules.”

Apple said that it supports international talks over how countries should divide up taxation rights for multinational companies. “This case was not about how much tax we pay, but where we are required to pay it. We’re proud to be the largest taxpayer in the world as we know the important role tax payments play in society,” an Apple spokesman said.

MacDailyNews Take:/ Miraculously, justice is served!

A company’s business success, regardless of degree, doesn’t mean some quasi-governmental political confederation headed by a dingbat gets to retroactively grab whatever sum they want.

The dunce Vestager is out of her depth.

Is Ireland its own country or merely a vassal state to a quasi-governmental political confederation that’s already been hit with one very significant defection?

The EU’s retroactive tax grab is a farce. — MacDailyNews, October 4, 2017

I think that Apple was targeted here. And I think that (anti-US sentiment) is one reason why we could have been targeted. People in leadership positions in several countries tell me that this is the agenda. I don’t know where that comes from. But what I feel strongly about is that this decision was politically based, of that I’m very confident. There is no reason for it in fact or in law… At a worldwide level, Apple pays income tax of 26.1 percent… I’d be the first to say that the tax system needs to be reformed and that it should be made simple and straightforward. But it should be talked about going forward, not in a way that retrofits the law to what others wish it was. It’s patently unfair and not what you expect from a developed country that has a history of rule and law. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, September 1, 2016

[Swordmaker]

European Union court upholds international tax laws while slapping down its own commissioner of competition who had attempted to unilaterally restructure all international Basis of taxing multinational commerce, by claiming that Apple had to pay income Taxes to Ireland, and ultimately the EU, and not to its home nation, the United States. Both Apple and Ireland appealed the commission’s 2015 order requiring Apple to pay 14.9 billion euros of back taxes, arguing it was both illegal under EU tax laws, but also violated the establishment treaties the created the EU. The court sided with Apple and Ireland and numerous Amicae today, vacating the tax order. — PING

APPLE BITES BACK EU AND WINS! PING!

If you want on or off the Apple/Mac/iOS Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Don W]

I am not an Apple fanboi, but this is absolutely a victory for free enterprise.

Apple pays more taxes than anyone else on earth, and the EU tried to steal even MORE from them.

Too bad, so sad, LOSER!

[Fungi]

Apple has the largest free cash balance of any corporation. You cannot rape the bride just because you see her as having too much beauty. She is only trying to preserve her dignity.

[Gator113]

I agree with you.

But, I am afraid I have achieved fanboy status. I own a 27” iMac Pro (it’s a fire breathing monster), I own a MacBook Pro, I just ordered a 12.9” iPad Pro with a Magic keyboard case and a TB of memory, I just received a PowerBeats Pro (love my music even when mowing my lawns for a couple hours. We have two iPhones, mine is an iPhone 11 Pro Max. I have an Apple watch for reasons not related to time. LOL

LOL.... I have several other Apple products, they tend to add up around here.

Yet, I remain a real man, not a homo and I have fun with all my toys.

[fireman15]

Apple pays more taxes than anyone else on earth, and the EU tried to steal even MORE from them.

Yes poor, poor suffering Apple. They paid an effective tax rate of 15.94% on their approximately $100 Billion in profit in 2019. It would consider it a miracle if I could get my effective tax rate down to 15.94%.

https://csimarket.com/stocks/singleProfitabilityRatiosy.php?code=AAPL&itx

[GaryCrow]

Simply an attempted money grab by the EU. Apple was doing what every corporation and every smart individual does which is to legally minimize their tax burden in order to keep from overpaying greedy governments whose lust for money is never satiated.

[Don W]

If you think that Apple itself paid ONE RED CENT in taxes you are mistaken. The people that bought the products are who paid those taxes.

I misspoke earlier. I should have said that Apple transferred money from its customers to the various governments demanding vigorish.

[SunkenCiv]

The lawless a-holes of the EU really pushed the credibility envelope on that one.

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

It would consider it a miracle if I could get my effective tax rate down to 15.94%

Reduce government to the absolute minimum of its Constitutional responsibilities. End all entitlement, wealth transfer, and social engineering programs.

The Founding Fathers would be violently outraged to find that government (federal, state, and local) is approaching 40% of our GDP. They thought government consuming 3% of GDP was more than enough, and would have fought a second revolution if it had hit 10% in their lifetimes.

Total government spending was 8% in 1912. Then we elected Woodrow Wilson and the progressives began a 107-year run of destroying this country. Total government spending was 13% of GDP when Wilson left office in 1921.

Sixteen years of Franklin Roosevelt jacked it up to 49% of GDP. The post-WWII recovery drove it down to 28% by 1960.

By the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency, it climbed back to 32%. Even under eight years of Ronald Reagan, it climbed to 34%. Eight years of Bill Clinton raised it to 36%. It remained at 36% under eight years of Barrack Obama.

Under President Trump total Government spending as a portion of GDP has declined ONE percentage point to 35%.

The formula for national success is simple: 4% of GDP for National Defense, 3% of GDP for ALL other Federal government, and 3% of GDP for ALL state and local government. Of course that is politically unacceptable, not the least because 16,500,000 "Civil ServantsMasters" would have to find honest employment.

[BTerclinger]

can you give us a summary? Is Apple paying this to the U.S.?

[Swordmaker]

can you give us a summary? Is Apple paying this to the U.S.?

In a terse answer, yes, about 90% of it was already paid in IncomeTaxes to the United States government. The EU idiot commission was claiming that somehow it was anti-competitive for Apple to pay it’s income taxes at the US’s higher rate than it was to pay the lower rate in Ireland. The 10% that is not paid to the US is a business tax credit against US taxes on Apple’s US Income Taxes, though. IF the court had ruled in the EU Commission’s favor, Apple would have essentially had to refine several years of back US income tax form, recalculating what it owed to the US and the US would have had to refund almost all the income taxes Apple had paid to it for it’s European sales profits, then Apple would have transferred the money’s it has already set aside in an escrow holding account (about $18 billion) to Ireland, who did not want it.

In other words, it would have been a transfer of taxes already paid to the US over several years by Apple, to the EU. . . Lost in all of the words published on this topic is that for the most part, it would not be Apple that would be out the money, but the US government which had already received it from Apple over about five years of income tax receipts. That’s why the US Treasury had joined Apple and Ireland in arguing this case in the EU court. The EU’s competition commission really had no legal jurisdiction to make their absurd claim and issue such an order, but it’s taken almost FIVE YEARS to finally get it settled, but the Commie-sion can STILL appeal even this court’s decision and severe legal slap down!

Even more importantly, had the court ruled the Commission was right, it would have upended over 250 years of treaties governing international taxation for trade, generally understood international accounting practices and how multinational corporations are taxed. . . all based on an appointed, non-elected bureaucrat’s notion that she has authority to do whatever she thinks to foster competition, regardless of what her legal purview really is.

[Swordmaker]

Yes poor, poor suffering Apple. They paid an effective tax rate of 15.94% on their approximately $100 Billion in profit in 2019. It would consider it a miracle if I could get my effective tax rate down to 15.94%.

You can’t be that stupid, fireman15. Apple pays more US Income Tax than any other corporation in the world and you are complaining? The fact is that the only reason Apple’s tax rate is that low is Donald J. Trump and the Republican’s pushing through a massive tax cut for US Corporations in 2017, which cut Apple’s effective tax rate from around 26% to that 15% today. . .

Add to that the fact that corporations do not pay any taxes, they merely collect them from their customers and pass them through to the government in the prices they charge for the goods and services they sell.

[fireman15]

You can’t be that stupid, fireman15.

I don't mind the insults because I know that you secretly count the moments until I show up on one of your threads... although it seems like it has been a long time since the last one. Either I haven't been paying attention or that new iPhone 11 must really be keeping you busy.

I am always amused by people who apparently believe that the most profitable corporation in the world shouldn't have to pay any tax... at all. Do you think Microsoft should have to pay taxes, or Amazon? Or how about the corporations owned by George Soros? I am an officer in a a corporation as I am sure many others here are... somehow it never occurred to me that the profit that we make should not be taxed and that we are not being taxed only our customers.

Being an Apple Fanboy has some type of strange psychological pathology that normal individuals have a hard time understanding.

[fireman15]

Reduce government to the absolute minimum of its Constitutional responsibilities. End all entitlement, wealth transfer, and Social engineering programs.

Like I said... It would take A MIRACLE!

[Swordmaker]

I am always amused by people who apparently believe that the most profitable corporation in the world shouldn't have to pay any tax... at all. Do you think Microsoft should have to pay taxes, or Amazon? Or how about the corporations owned by George Soros? I am an officer in a a corporation as I am sure many others here are... somehow it never occurred to me that the profit that we make should not be taxed and that we are not being taxed only our customers.

Sigh~

Like a Liberal or a progressive, just when I complimented you by saying you “could not be that stupid,” you go and prove you must be by claiming that businesses who make profits should be paying income taxes, and implying that somehow claiming that advocating that corporations not pay taxes is “amusing”: “I am always amused by people who apparently believe that the most profitable corporation in the world shouldn't have to pay any tax... at all.

No, firsman15, I am not implying it at all, I am outright asserting it as a fact of economic law. YOU are demonstrating your lack of basic economic education by asserting that corporations SHOULD be paying taxes on their profits. I do not think it’s a fact, just because it is Apple as you so snakily assert because it has nothing to do with it being Apple. I also think, not believe, that Microsoft, Amazon, Soros’ numerous corporations, etc., should not pay taxes for the same Economic LAW reason/fact that “businesses do not and, in fact, CAN NOT actually “pay” taxes, such entities can only “collect” taxes and pass them on. Their customers pay all the taxes assessed against a business because those taxes are reflected in the prices of the goods and services sold by that company.” Let me again repeat that as LOUD as possible to get it through your baseball mitt covered hands you are holding over your ears you apparently have stuffed with cotton to prevent you from learning facts!

CORPORATIONS DON’T PAY ANY TAXES AT ALL, NO
MATTER WHAT TAX RATE A
GOVERNMENT IMPOSES ON THEM!

BUSINESSES INCLUDE THOSE TAXES
IN THE PRICES OF THEIR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.
THEIR CUSTOMERS PAY EVERY ONE
OF THE TAXES IMPOSED!

Did that fact of economics get through to your brain? A business is merely the government’s tool, another means, of painlessly collecting taxes from the consumer while keeping those taxpayers unconscious and oblivious to the process, fireman.

ALL of the taxes that run the government come from the people, the consumers and citizens of all of the economy’s goods and services of that governments’ nation/state. ALL. They are either overtly assessed on income or they are hidden taxes. . . But they come out of the pockets of the people’s hard work. Without these taxes on businesses, the prices of the products and services would be far lower due to the competitive forces of the market. It’s inevitable. Market forces cannot force taxes lower. There’s not alternative place for government costs which are ultimately extracted at the point of a gun.

Despite this, you allege that Apple pays ZERO taxes, yet that is simply not the case. In most years, Apple is the single largest business income tax payer in the world, paying $1 out of every $40 of business income taxes collected in the world. Yet YOU blithely claim “I am always amused by people who apparently believe that the most profitable corporation in the world shouldn't have to pay any tax... at all.” and claim you are on the board of a corporation. Well, goody for you. I’ve been on numerous boadrds and also been the CEO of a couple of corporations. . . I also hold a degree in economics... and another in Business Administration.

You show you are not capable of understanding how taxation works in the environments of corporations you are supposedly helping to manage. You should be working to minimize the taxes those businesses have to pay, recognizing that the politicians are looking to painlessly extract money from people who will not know they are paying taxes with every product and service they purchase, in ADDITION to the sales taxes the politicians are imposing. YOUR businesses is also collecting and sending taxes to the government as their agents with every dollar you take in. You do the same with every dollar you pay in wage expense. YOUR business is collecting it from your employees from money YOUR customers have paid for your products! Not grasping those simple concepts? That is on YOU. You don’t even, apparently, grasp where your corporations’ revenue and income arises. . . It ain’t YOU buddy, except for what efforts you put in, for which you should be compensated, and your personal income taxed.

A corporation’s profit should only be taxed when it is distributed to investors or not re-invested in profit growing and generating ventures for those investors’ mutual benefit, if held within the corporate structure beyond a legally defined time, otherwise such “profit” should be treated as merely retained earnings, or deferred income, either a non-taxable, booked line item.

So you are telling me you LIKE collecting money from your customers you should not have to, holding it, paying bookkeepers, banking fees, and accountants money you should not have to pay, and doing paperwork under threat of law and fines for making any errors, all so you can send that money you collected for the convenience of the government, to the government, ALL at your customers’ expense (which you know you also charged to your customers as a hidden convenience fee [expense] because you have to fold those costs into your price structure), complicating everything ABOUT doing businesses and accounting, just because why???? Because the politicians don’t want the rubes knowing exactly how much they are REALLY paying out of their pockets to mismanage the government.

We have Demoncrats who now are introducing bills to tax corporate and business REVENUES, instead of profits. Do you see the insanity of that? I hope you don’t fall for that line of horse manure.

[fireman15]

CORPORATIONS DON’T PAY ANY TAXES AT ALL, NO
MATTER WHAT TAX RATE A
GOVERNMENT IMPOSES ON THEM!

Thank you for the chuckle and enlightening glimpse into your fun house mirror rationalization of the tax code as it applies to corporate profits. Also amusing was your claim that “you can't be that stupid fireman15” was a compliment.

As a businessman you have to be aware that the reasons for forming a corporation are myriad. And also that the rate of taxation even when book keeping is structured in a way to minimize profits still can have a major impact on the bottom line. What you have written is a gross oversimplification and not accurate in the real world.

If I didn't already know that you ignore the advice of any medical professional who does not adhere to your equally off-kilter views on nutrition and exercise, I would in all sincerity advise you to have your list of meds and your diet reviewed. I am not sure if you are suffering from a lack of perfusion to your brain from too little exercise and lack of important nutrients or if it is something more serious, but I am concerned.

Your thought process seems to be as convoluted as any leftist, socialist, or democrat running for office that I have come into contact with. If you were a woman of color, you would make the perfect running mate for Joe Biden. LOL!!!

But sorry to have once again ruined another one of your Apple fanboy parties here on Free Republic...

[Swordmaker]

WOW!

In your world view, explaining a well understood principle of Economics is somehow a symptom of an Apple user’s derangement instilled by a medical condition? You are completely delusional.

What part of the fact that all business taxes are actually paid by their customers as part of the prices of their goods and services, do you simply FAIL TO GRASP???? It’s not a “rationalization” or a “fun house view”, it’s a fact. Just because our US tax code is not rational doesn’t negate the factual basis of what I said. Where else is the money to pay those taxes going to come from? PLEASE, fireman15, enlighten us. Are these businesses going to print that money???? Grow it on a money tree? Last time I looked, the IRS doesn’t accept barter for tax payment. It’s cash on the barrel head.

If the government INCREASES the tax rate, prices of goods and services HAVE TO GO UP! This is a function of the ECONOMIC LAW of supply and demand and pricing affected by that. TAXES are a cost that must be included in the price calculation.

Try opening an Economics text book instead of making amateur medical diagnoses about factual economics for which you are likely well qualified to put out fires. . .

In addition, try showing me how any of this applies specifically only to Apple, which opinion you have apparently conflated to me, and to apply only to Apple, in your deranged mind.

What is it with you anti-Apple deranged idiots? Every single one of you devolves to medical or psychiatric diagnoses when you are called on the carpet for your thread misbehavior or deranged ideas? Did you have a confab and decide that was the Apple fanboy ad hominem attack of the month? It has gotten quite pervasive from you guys. If I were to do the same, I’d be diagnosing “projection.”

And, again, as an Economist, you are a great fireman. . . But you’re not an economist. You keep demonstrating your abysmal ignorance in that field, while I once taught college level Economics.

I defer to you on everything on firefighting. All I know about that is to point a spray of water or a properly certified fire extinguisher at a blaze. Nothing more. For that, I will call on you and your expertise. I will not denigrate you, your education, or anything about what you know and were educated to know about fires. Unlike you and my fields of expertise.

Have a nice day.

[fireman15]

I have been on pins and needles waiting for your nasty response... Obviously money a corporation pays in taxes on the profit made on products or services that it provides becomes part of its expense to do business. You would make a better comedian than economist.

I have told you on many occasions that I have owned and used Apple products for years now, so I do not actually qualify as a “anti-Apple deranged idiot”. What I said in this thread that apparently set you off is that I do not feel sorry that Apple pays the same corporate tax rate every other corporation operating in the United States does. Whether you agree with our tax system or not... “thems are the rules” and somehow Apple has managed top make more profit than any other corporation operating within those rules.

I am glad that you are having such a fun time hurling insults. Unfortunately, your diatribe makes no more sense than Joe Biden does on a bad day. You repeatedly try to set up nonsensical straw-man arguments that have no actual connection to what has been said. You seem to be losing it; I remember that “good old days” when we were able to keep our discussions on track.

I miss the Swordmaker of old. Can you still even help someone get their iPhone to work these days. I hope you can pull yourself together... remember that your brain actually needs carbs to function. On your diet you probably have really bad breath and headaches all the time that make you cranky and difficult to have discussions with. Go eat a muffin or something before wasting your time responding with nonsensical comments that have nothing to do with our discussion.

[Swordmaker]

And again, you devolve to ad hominem insults. . . Attacking me, rather than the discussion. CARBS? Really? You are the delusional on here, making medical diagnoses on absolutely zero evidence. Give that a rest. You have no idea what my diet is. None at all.

Your Apple derangement is obvious. You enter Apple threads and spread misinformation and innuendo such as hints that Apple pays not taxes at all or remarkably less than any other multinational by means of reprehensible tactics. You then show ignorance of basic economic principles and throw barbs at someone explaining them, calling those principles clownish, making those comments “baiting” and “biting.” It is obvious it is deliberate. This has been one of them. Why do you feel compelled to do that?

Apple did not even have much of a dog in this fight. THE TAX MONEY WAS ALREADY PAID TO THE US, Fireman. What part of that do you fail to grasp???

The fight was about an international concept that has been in place for over 250 years that the SOCIALISTS want to overturn, throwing everything into chaos.

Apple would have lost NOTHING to have acquiesced and said: “fine, let the money go to Ireland and not the US! We don’t care who gets the taxes.” But they did. Giving up would have added to every businesses’ cost of doing business in the world.

Why? Because then the world’s accounting system would have been thrown into chaos as every country in the world would have required every business in the world to account for every single dime of profit expensed and earned due to sales to their citizenry and thus must be paid to THEIR treasuries, instead of the reciprocal taxation system in place for over two hundred years where businesses are taxed according to their home country’s laws and rules, with minor adjustments. Every business would have to file income taxes in every nation where even a single one of their products was sold.

In this instance, it would have been the US GOVERNMENT would have been out the tax money that Apple had paid. . . NOT Apple, and it would have meant that every other company headquartered in the US would be in the SAME BOAT. . . And vice verse. . . All around the world! AND, it was the first salvo that the EU commissioner was preparing so that EVERY ONE OF THE EU MEMBER COUNTRIES COULD BILL APPLE and every multinational for income taxes.

Why do you think the US Government and other governments, including IRELAND and every single multinational filed AMICUS briefs or actually joined in arguing this case, arguing against the EU Competition Commision’s ruling? Why was Apple joined by the US State Department and the US Treasury in arguing this case???? AND the Republic of Ireland who said categorically they don’t WANT to collect these taxes. . . And the EU’s own Department of Foreign Affairs?

Learn something before you pounce on a thread you really don’t understand. . . . Just because it’s, well, “Apple” and “Apple bad” and “Apple’s 15-16% tax rate was somehow despicable. . .

But YOU tall me I don’t know anything about US corporate taxes. . . BAH!. This is about working in the ARENA OF WORLD TAXATION, fireman. WAKE UP!

You did not grasp the gravitas of what this decision meant. Instead, YOU wanted to play “Apple Games.” . . . ANC then you try to make it all about me. You fail. This is serious business about the coordinated war on Capitalism. Pay attention and you might get it. . . But you want to make it petty personalities.

As to whether I can help a person get the iPhone working or not, of course I can, fireman. But this thread is not a thread about that.

This is a thread about an attempt by Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition, to do an end run around the EU’s own founding documents, the interlocking treaties signed by it’s various member nations about member taxation autonomy, International Accounting and well established international laws, and the goals of the international Socialist movement toward a New Socialist World Order which she espouses and uses her position of power to push. Both attempts involved Apple.

As this is not the first time, it likely will not be the last, that Margrethe Vestager will pull this kind of end run. Six years ago she went after Samsung, attempting to fine them their entire year’s worldwide profit. She trying some now on several other American companies. And being a committed, non-elected, anti-Capitalist, pro-Socialist, she will do it again.