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by darrenoc 2167 days ago
The thinly veiled subtext is that the place they are required to pay it is nowhere.
1 comments

It's paid in the US. The EU is mad that they aren't getting it and have been targeting American companies for atleast 5 years.

This lawyer also has one of the worst success records in these types of cases.

It wasn't paid in the US. The purpose of the scheme that Apple (and other companies) were using was to protect profits from US taxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Yes, it was. Their arrangement only helped them defer US taxes, but the taxes were paid when the money was repatriated.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-pay-38-billion-in-repa...

No, as your link says it wasn't. Only part of the taxes were paid when the money was repatriated:

> A provision allows for a one-time repatriation of corporate cash held abroad at a lower tax rate than what would have been paid under the previous tax plan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill...

I mean, tax rates can change over time. It seems like the goalposts have now been moved from "did they pay US tax?" to "did they pay enough US tax?".

You're free to argue that 15% is not a high enough corporate tax rate, but it is factually incorrect to say Apple did not pay US tax on the money they earned overseas.

> I mean, tax rates can change over time. It seems like the goalposts have now been moved from "did they pay US tax?" to "did they pay enough US tax?".

No, that is decidedly not what we are talking about. The claim was that holding all your money away from the US does not matter because the tax will be paid eventually. As we see, no it wasn't and the tax rate was not lowered because "taxes change over time" but because otherwise companies will just not ever repatriate their money.

It is factually correct to say that apple did not pay the full US tax rate on the money they earned overseas. You are free to argue that this is fine and they at least still paid some, lower tax rate, but this is the whole topic we are talking about. Apple pays very low tax rates and the EU, Ireland and the US are arguing whether this is unfair (state aid) and should change.