[dmitrygr]

five accountants will produce six results from the same input based on the same laws, all of which the IRS will accept. Laws are not code. They are not unambiguous and noncontradictory.

And forget apple! This means that any company in existence now needs a lawyer who understands the Treaty of Lisbon! Just in case some EU country tells them to do X, they now need to know if said country can actually say so!

I think you underestimate the damage of "we cannot trust the actual government to tell us what we can and cannot do"

[toyg]

> any company in existence now needs a lawyer who understands the Treaty of Lisbon!

Hyperbole makes you look hysteric. The reality is that every other company is doing just fine, paying the tax they owe. The only companies who have to worry are shady ones like Apple (abusing tax-havens since the '80s, with Braeburn etc): it's now established that secret agreements with cosy governments will not be tolerated in the EU, as it should be.

[noirbot]

Except this agreement was 30 years old and hasn't been effect for over a decade. Even if you think doing everything else right, how do you know some EU court next year won't find that something you did decades ago where you asked the local regulators for approval and they gave it won't be found to be illegal.

If you think Apple and Google are the only two "shady companies" who work with the governments of the countries they operate in to optimize their taxes, I'm not sure what to tell you.

[Silhouette]

Do you really believe Apple-Ireland is the only cosy tax-based incentive that any EU member state has offered to any international company to invest and operate locally in the past 30 years?

What's next? All the member states that offered attractive VAT rates when the regime was different years ago and doing so was advantageous retrospectively get reset to some baseline rate around the bloc's average and every company that ever paid VAT at lower rates in those member states gets a bill?

[noirbot]

It's also literally not the only one that got in trouble today. Google's deal with Ireland also got smacked down.

[toyg]

> Do you really believe Apple-Ireland is the only cosy tax-based incentive that any EU member state has offered to any international company

Cases are prosecuted if someone (either competitors or the Commission) thinks they're worth the trouble. Apple and Google were clearly worth it, simply because of the massive amounts of money involved - nobody cares if an ice-cream stall is foregone 100 euros. If you know of other worthy cases, feel free to take them up with the courts.

You're mischaracterizing the issue, by the way. The problem is the way one specific company was treated, which was not in line with the practices the Irish had cleared with the EU. Other companies were not treated like that and were just fine.

> retrospectively get reset to some baseline rate around the bloc's average and every company that ever paid VAT at lower rates in those member states gets a bill

That would be an extremely popular measure, politically, but there is currently no indication that the Commission or the ECJ will ever ask for that, and it has nothing to do with this judgement.

[Silhouette]

I don't see what you think is mischaracterised here. Lots of companies have received individual favourable tax treatments within the EU in ways that would not fly today. Several member states have historically established competitive tax environments at the likely expense of their fellow members too. As I said before it is unrealistic to argue as if Apple and Ireland is the only such case.

And I doubt that retrospective VAT change would still be very popular after trading with the EU became completely toxic - which is not an unrealistic outcome from such a hostile act. Businesses already avoid EU customers because of the existing environment. Retrospective demands for more money would be much worse.

[pyrale]

> I think you underestimate the damage of "we cannot trust the actual government to tell us what we can and cannot do"

I wonder how these companies manage not to run afoul of US FCPA.

[yunohn]

Dude, seriously? You’re acting like Apple was clueless here. This entire controversy is about Ireland and Apple colluding for over a decade to avoid paying corporate taxes anywhere else in the EU. Nobody involved was ignorant of the potential illegality, rather that was deliberately the point.