About time!

[Mike Dempsey]

Vat is a tax on sales. Corporation tax is a tax on profit. Vat is collected by the seller on behalf of the taxman if they are registered for vat. Whilst it is hard to dodge vat if you are physically based and selling in this country, like Starbucks etc, it is easy to be creative with your accounts in order to minimise your profits and thereby your corporation tax. In the case of Apple they were saying that all their sales in Europe were going through Ireland who were setting a very low rate of corporation tax in order to attract businesses to the country. The Irish Govt dont want to collect this enormous sum of money as it like them admitting to this practice which is illegal under EU taxation rules and will force them to set the proper rate. When this happens all these companies will move to some other tax haven. The Irish people will then realise that they actually dont have a sustainable economy and will rapidly go bust. There are strong rumours now going around about an Irish referendum on EU membership, which if they werent part of Europe they could set their own rates of corporation tax and stick two fingers up to Merkel et al. The funny thing about this is that all these thousands of people who have applied for joint Irish /UK citizenship will have wasted their money and time because if the Irish wish to leave the EU they will need to be very quick about it in order to keep Apple and the other tax parasites.

[Vespasian]

My take on this affair is that this fine is retaliation for the fines America has inflicted on European companies..

 

BP, and a few banks have been stung in the past few years by America.. this is nothing but a warning to the Americans that two can play that game....

 

It also has the added benefit of threatening countries like Ireland who think they can undermine what aught be a fair, across the board tax system for all of Europe...

 

And, All this talk about Ireland having a referendum on Europe to help out a morally bankrupt multinational is tosh.. does anyone with a brain think people are gonna side with a tax dodger as apposed to doin whats right and proper?...

[Mesterh]

Is it not more to do with the UK government allowing Apple to put their money through other channels rather than Ireland having low tax rates? Surely they will just use Luxemburg our some other country.