[nodamage]

This is a common misconception but not actually true.

If Apple sells a copy of your app to an American customer the revenue from their royalty is booked to Apple Inc. (the U.S. company) and they would pay U.S. income tax on that sale.

The only time the sale would be booked to their Irish subsidiary is if the customer was located in Europe, or it would go to one of their other international subsidiaries depending on the specific location of the customer.

[oldbbsnickname]

Legal BEPS exist and is more complicated than this oversimplification. While Apple didn't do Stanley Works "moving" to Bermuda, Tim Cook is no slouch in the financial domain as that was (and is) his wheelhouse. The calculus involves a myriad of factors including a risk appetite, leadership ethics, lots of data, and decision support. As an aside, I once parted ways with 2 potential business partners because they were on the privately-admitted illegal side of BEPS and tax minimization in speech and action. (Last I heard, they're lobbyists for political interests based in another country.)

Also, the books for taxes and the books for securities regulators aren't precisely equivalent per jurisdiction based on how things are counted or not counted. For example, in general, Norwegian and US accounting practices tended to be/are vastly different in some areas... hence a need for local external auditors.

Corporate Inversions: Stanley Works and the Lure of Tax Havens (2002) https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=29288

[nodamage]

Sure, but not sure how that’s relevant to my point that Apple does not actually move US profits offshore. The major controversies around Apple’s tax practices are from:

1. Apple not paying US tax rates on products sold outside of the US because that money is kept offshore instead of being repatriated, and

2. Apple paying low Irish tax rates on products sold outside the US instead of the specific tax rate of the country where the product was sold.

(1) I don’t find all that controversial because they would technically owe US taxes on the money if it was ever brought home, but (2) is understandably more controversial. Nonetheless given that Apple won their appeal against the European Commission it might not actually be illegal under EU law to do what they did.