Item — HN Reader

People filing their own tax returns: "This is pretty complicated. Maybe I should hire an accountant or something"

People commenting on a case involving international tax law and how it applies to a mega corporation: "I got this - I'm gonna tell everyone else what the fair and legal result of this case should be"

OTOH, I'm getting a bit tired of these PR pieces that pretend that their company is all about uplifting communities and helping people. I've got nothing against free-market capitalism -- it seems to be working out more or less OK compared to some other economic systems we've tried -- but it seems pointless to have to always pretend that you're not playing the game in order to make profits. A "yes, this was a loophole that we found that allowed us to not pay much tax, but that doesn't give anyone the right to close it retrospectively, and we'll be seeing the EU in court" would have been a nicer statement to read from them.

4 comments

I thought it was rather barefaced in the article that moments after crediting itself for lifting all those poor citizens of Cork out of poverty by giving them jobs (there's quite the "you should've seen the place before we came along, terrible, terrible" vibe to the first two paragraphs) it then goes on to deride the people it employs as being worthless by saying that of course virtually all the real value is created in California...

Sure, it's R&D is in California. But R&D is only 7% of its expenditure. The other 93% is necessary to bring in the revenue, so it very much part of the value.

The sad thing is, it's kinda true. Not just Apple, and not just Cork, but overall the 'sweetheart' deals for companies bringing a lot of employment to the country, have helped. They're helping us find jobs rather than directly putting coin in the state purse, but I'm okay with that.

This is a country where, in the 70s & 80s, finding a job meant moving to the UK. Now, pretty much everyone I know works for one multinational or another. And the multinationals all came here for the same reason.

That is a rather unfair reading. I dislike the "look at the poor little people of Cork we rescued" but perhaps they insinuated that the Cork section was not as vital but I'm not sure I would see that as deriding them.

The question is not whether some tax trickery is legal according to the small print of the law. The issue is that the taxation level of humongously rich corporations is perceived to be unfair. This is especially a sensitive issue in Western Europe where the middle class is taxed through the roof to sustain social-democracies that are having big problems with their budgets. Apple is heading for some serious PR damage if they believe they will get out of this with their traditional cute marketing.

Tax law is not easy by any stretch and it's probably now more complicated than ever. We are at a point in time where possibly for the first time in history companies are so big to be in every country of the world, there are new fields to regulate, new technologies an situations. Laws are sometimes hard to change and haven't caught up yet with all of this. That's why there are many gray areas and possibly many loopholes.

If they had a real interest in the community, what would be really nice to see is companies trying to contribuite to improving this laws rather than trying to find loopholes that then need to be patched with what are more "hacks" than proper solutions.

Instead here we see Apple trying to justify themselves with some bs PR. Pretty sad but quite in line with what I would have expected of them.

You don't need to be an expert to understand that 50 Euro Taxes on 1 Million Profit, is not that much.

Sure, but also think about:

* Can we expect mega corps to go "Hey, this loophole would allow me to only pay 50 euro in tax completely legally, but I think I'll pass on it this time"? In a profit based economy, it's expected that people will try to maximize their profits/minimize the tax that they pay within a certain framework. If Apple did nothing illegal, then it's kind of hard to say that they did something immoral. Or at least it's complicated.

* If we're ignoring legalities and only talking about what we like and what seems 'fair' to us then yes, Apple has a dirty history of using Eastern child labour, etc. But at this point, it's also ethically complicated about whether it's worse for Apple to have these few billion dollars of if they should go towards EU coffers to finance the bombing of the Middle East, etc.

I'm not advocating a pro or anti Apple stance here -- but I think most people in this thread are oversimplifying the case to the point of error, hence my original remark.