from Hacker News

Apple will start paying $21B in back taxes to Ireland

by jklp on 4/25/18, 7:01 AM with 72 comments

  • by naskwo on 4/25/18, 9:11 AM

    It's weird that the EU has a monetary union, but so much difference in corporate income tax rates.

    Great that IE is 12%, but this "competition" is BS in the sense that they needed the higher-tax countries to bail them out just a few years ago:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_banking_crisis

    It's a leak in the EU system, and it needs to be plugged.

    Just imagine what a unified income tax rate in the EU would do. (Post-Brexit, although if I were a gambling man, I'd wager that the Brexit will never materialize; A Brexit would sort of be like throwing out your existing post-ww2 source code instead of refactoring. Recipe for disaster).

    THEN countries would really need to compete on quality of life and infrastructure to attract (US) corporations to establish show. Amsterdam is happy to welcome all the post-Brexit (see comment above) banks and EU-related orgs, as is Frankfurt.

  • by chx on 4/25/18, 11:30 AM

    > Apple was hit by the European Commission with a $21 billion bill for back taxes in 2016.

    > It’s starting to pay the funds

    You know, I was fined for not paying my installments (not my taxes! just my installments) in 2017 and these guys didn't pay their back taxes for two bloody years and were not charged hefty penalties and interest for it. Really, blood boiling unfair.

  • by Kudos on 4/25/18, 8:31 AM

    That's Australian dollars, it's €13B.

  • by corey_moncure on 4/25/18, 2:05 PM

    That's roughly $5000 per Irish citizen. A good day for those chaps! Presumably they will be paying interest on all this borrowed money, yes? As well as late fees for non-payment?

  • by Isamu on 4/25/18, 2:40 PM

    NOTE: Headline is misleading.

    Actually what they are starting to do is put the money into escrow while the case moves slowly through the courts. Ireland is not yet receiving money for back taxes.

    Ireland's position is still that the taxes are not owed and that the government made no improper deals.

    It will take some years before the taxes are actually paid to Ireland or Apple gets the money back from escrow.

  • by Tepix on 4/25/18, 8:08 AM

    Finally! It's a shame that Ireland had to be forced to demand this money from Apple.

  • by FBISurveillance on 4/25/18, 9:28 AM

    I'm glad this is happening, hope they'll close this Double Irish Dutch Sandwich loophole for good.

  • by macco on 4/25/18, 8:44 AM

    When will countries finally understand that it's better to co-operate them too compete against another? Multinational companies are playing them against each other.

  • by hungerstrike on 4/25/18, 1:22 PM

  • by acchow on 4/25/18, 5:26 PM

    AAPL up 1.1%.

    Seems the markets already believed Apple would lose this one.

  • by sabujp on 4/26/18, 9:35 AM

    how about you pay back taxes to the US

  • by PunchTornado on 4/25/18, 8:26 AM

    Sadly, the government has to accept it.

    Damn EU! Destroying our country.