[Karunamon]

And if they didn't, they'll be fined and be forced to pay whatever they didn't, which will probably not happen again in the future as a way to avoid being fined.

If they did? You seem to be dancing around the central point, which is, these numbers, while absurd, are generally completely above board and legal. Nobody is going to pay more tax than they're obligated to, and it's absurd to expect otherwise.

[justincormack]

Thats actually not the case. Starbucks voluntarily paid tax in the UK, even though it was apparently not obliged to as it has never managed to make any money(!).

The problem about prosecuting these cases is that transfer pricing and IP "costs" are difficult to demonstrate as faked, and some of the loopholes may be legal, although Apple is now dismantling its double Irish Dutch sandwich, one of the tax avoidance strategies it invented.

[Karunamon]

Read "nobody" in the colloquial, rather than linguistic sense. In the same way that nobody uses Blackberries anymore :)