[humanbeinc]

1) No it's not. If it's a break of contract with the EUs playbook of economic fairness amongst its members and therefor can be prosecuted forever.

2) Doesn't matter who gets the money. It's forcing corporations to not use Ireland as a tax haven anymore (there are others like Luxembourg, etc., but it's a step in the right direction)

[Silhouette]

If it's a break of contract with the EUs playbook of economic fairness amongst its members and therefor can be prosecuted forever.

This creates a system where even information from the national government charging taxes in its own jurisdiction can't be relied upon, and where literally billions of euros of tax can be retrospectively demanded indefinitely. That is a toxic environment for anyone running a business, even someone trying to do so honestly. If the EU wants to wade in after this much time and claim this much damage has been going on, it's going to strain credibility and the EU is going to deserve all the contempt that businesses will hold it in as a direct result.

I write this, BTW, as someone who runs small businesses in the UK that very much are at a disadvantage compared to the arrangements available to large multinationals. I'm all in favour of having a tax system that is transparently fair, where the same rules apply to everyone. But I'm not in favour of officially saying one thing, letting businesses carry on accordingly for a very long time, and then retrospectively changing the rules.

I think it's also worth mentioning that the EU's track record on tax issues and dealing with the large multinationals and their complex arrangements is awful. Just look at the hash they made of the VAT changes last year, which were supposedly going to have a beneficial effect by reducing multinational tax avoidance, but in fact did almost exactly the opposite, causing far more damage to smaller businesses than larger ones.

Apple's tax arrangements may be ethically questionable, and the system that permits those arrangements has plenty of room for improvement. However, if you think this specific move isn't a politically motivated cash grab by an EU that is in trouble and has several key elections coming up, I heard there are some Nigerian princes who have some great investment opportunities to offer you.

[pjc50]

> I think it's also worth mentioning that the EU's track record on tax issues and dealing with the large multinationals and their complex arrangements is awful. Just look at the hash they made of the VAT changes last year, which were supposedly going to have a beneficial effect by reducing multinational tax avoidance, but in fact did almost exactly the opposite, causing far more damage to smaller businesses than larger ones.

This is I think one of the few genuine substantial complaints against EU membership: the EU is very bad at dealing with small businesses, because they don't have time and money to get involved in the legislative process. Brussels is too far away.

[Silhouette]

Indeed. In the cast of the VAT mess, they literally didn't even realise that many thousands of very small ("micro") businesses existed. They effectively managed to legislate a lot of those businesses out of existence, because the compliance costs were more than the "extra Christmas present money" level of revenue the microbusinesses were generating. When the relevant officials finally noticed, literally a few days before the new rules came into effect, the initial response was basically "We've been working on this for years, why are people only objecting now?", as if someone selling knitting pattern PDFs from their kitchen table was going to know about EU-level discussions on international tax laws and contribute early. It was like a case study in being totally out of touch and introducing wildly disproportionate administrative burdens, and the officials involved didn't even realise they were the punchline.

[krona]

>> a break of contract..

This isn't to do with a contract or treaty as much as how it's interpreted and how that interpretation has changed recently. What's changed in the past 18 months is how the EU Commission interprets the arms' length principle as it relates to international tax law, now using it's own guidelines instead of the international norm/consensus, i.e.: OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines. 'Retroactive' is definitely the right word to use.

>> Doesn't matter who gets the money

Perhaps, but it matters who loses it. The US Treasury see it as their money, since the untaxed cash hoard being referred to is on the Apple Inc. balance sheet. The implications for the EU could be far reaching.