Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break Following an eight-year legal tussle, Europe's highest court has ruled in a "final judgment" that Apple benefited from massive tax breaks after Ireland contravened EU state aid rules. All those years back in 2016, the European Commission (EC) said that a tax deal between Apple and Ireland was in breach of the European Union's …
Don't kid yourself, the courts are only fighting over which from of corporate welfare is allowed: the "Double Irish" or the 'We'll pretend that we collect taxes on the rich but write enough loopholes so they don't really have to pay a pence anyway'.
Worldwide corporate interests will simply make sure that the next round of legislation writes the tax break Irish-style loopholes into law. And in the next election people will happily vote for the party that does it, stating that the tax loopholes breaks are "good for the economy". Rinse, repeat.
"'We'll pretend that we collect taxes on the rich but write enough loopholes so they don't really have to pay a pence anyway'."
Ireland has a tax that they do collect, but it's much lower than other locales so it's a good move for multi-nationals to "earn" their money in Ireland where they aren't subject to as much tax. These arrangements are also mainly a bit of accounting magic so Ireland charging less tax doesn't pay out as much since some of those corporations don't generate much in the way of expenses for the government. There isn't enough savings for the little guys to play this game due to the cost in blood sucking lawyers and trickster accountants. A company needs to be worldwide and into the multiple billions of revenue to make it work. Is the EU jealous that Ireland has found a way to game the system on a sovereign level? With the EU, is Ireland even sovereign anymore?
> With the EU, is Ireland even sovereign anymore?
BZZT. I was expecting this argument to pop up sooner rather than later. So firstly, let's remember that Ireland is a voluntary member of the EU, and chose to balance aspects of its sovereignty in return for other benefits, just as all other members did. They're free to leave and be as "sovereign" (i.e. isolationist) as they like, but that would cut both ways with no-one being obliged to trade or cooperate with *them* either.
But to get to my second, more important point (and I'll rehash one of my earlier comments since we've been here before)...
Ireland's taxation situation with respect to Apple *is* the legitimate business of other countries, because the entire setup depends in the first place on those other countries cooperating and permitting Apple to funnel profits from sales in *their* countries as being "made"- and hence taxed- in Ireland.
What do you suppose would happen if all those other- equally sovereign- countries were suddenly able to, and did, decide not to cooperate with the legislation that permitted that obvious fiction?
That if all those other countries decided that- while Ireland was free to tax any genuine sales within its own borders however the hell it wanted- any sales in *their* own countries were to be taxed *there* at *their* rates* and funnelling them through tax havens would be outlawed?
The whole thing would fall over quicker than a house of cards, because it was never about Ireland alone.
So, as I said back then, Ireland isn't the victim here, Ireland is the beneficiary.
> Is the EU jealous that Ireland has found a way to game the system on a sovereign level?
Evidently it hasn't, as it's been deemed to have been breaking the rules by doing so.
Indeed it is, but malgre nous.
The point of view of the Irish government in this litigation was, in short, the EU can't force us to collect a tax that, between us and the corporate citizen concerned, we have decided we would rather not collect.
It can. It's called the rule of law.
Hardly voluntary old boy...I recall them being threatened by the eureich with "consequences" if they didn't come up with a yes vote to joining back in the day..Maastricht treaty I believe it was called. The Irish people voted against it twice...Make them vote until it's yes...The eureich threw billions of euros at Ireland, it's payback time ..Voluntary you say !?.
It's fairly simple. This has been portrayed as an issue of Irish sovereignty, i.e. the EU interfering in Ireland's right to its own tax arrangements.
And I pointed out that it was pretty much the opposite. That the entire *point* of the scheme relied on the ability to deem profits earned throughout numerous other European countries- profits which, in reality, were quite clearly earned outside Ireland and would normally have been taxed in *those* countries at *their* rates- to have been "earned"- and hence taxed- in Ireland instead.
In other words, my whole point was that this was the complete opposite of the "victim"/"sovereignty" situation portrayed, i.e. interference in Ireland's internal tax arrangements. In reality, it was about them imposing rules on a scheme that relied upon Ireland being able to effectively piggyback on and override taxation that should- and otherwise would- have been the business of *other* countries....!
I betting most of that is being hold offshore while they wait for a tax break before they take it back to the States, so they can avoid having to pay a lot of Tax on it.
That's exactly it. Apple are not alone in actually borrowing in the US (using foreign holdings as collateral) to fund stock buybacks and pay dividends. This is more tax efficient than on-shoring the capital from Ireland, etc and paying US taxes (until such a time as USG offers a tax amnesty for businesses wanting to onshore capital, at which point they move it back and pay a risibly low rate).
"Apple has so much money it has been struggling to invest all of it."
Maybe they should go back into computers. Tim Cook has turned Apple into the iPhone/iWatch company and less of a presence in computers. They do lead ways of innovating obsolescence by gluing things together in a way that is nigh on impossible to service and designing products that have to be replaced as they can't be upgraded once they leave the factory in China.
> Tim Cook has turned Apple into the iPhone/iWatch company and less of a presence in computers.
Not to excuse Cook, but Apple was already heading in that direction under Jobs following the success of the iPhone, and I suspect they would have ended up there anyway. Even if- I suspect- they wouldn't have rested us much on those profitable laurels as they have under Book.
> They do lead ways of innovating obsolescence by gluing things together in a way that is nigh on impossible to service
Jobs was *always* a driver of Apple towards closed, non-upgradeable consumer appliances from the early on. (For example, the very first versions of the Mac were pretty much a closed systems with no easy way- if at all- of upgrading the original, insufficient 128K RAM. Even the later "Macintosh 128K" could only be upgraded to 512K via unofficial means).
The current hard-to-service situation with iPhones et al is just the logical conclusion of that approach.
The problem with Cook is that he seems to lack the driving vision that seemed to drive Jobs, and they haven't come out with any fundamentally new, widely-successful product lines since Jobs' death, except possibly the Watch. (And that never really set the world on fire).
The biggest innovation from Apple in recent years has been the M-series processors, but while those have made some impressive performance gains, they haven't driven fundamentally new or different product lines.
Agree the direction was set years earlier with the Newton and then the iPod.
In some respects you could say the iPhone was just the (highly successful) merger of the iPod with the Newton. The success of the iPhone followed by the iPad(*) really cemented Apple’s position in the personal device market.
(*)whilst android phones have done well, there really isn’t a standout competitor to the iPad.
"Bitcoin: +450% in the last 5 years "
Fine if you were in early, but since then, you have to be very lucky on your timing to make (or not lose) money. Of course, the whole idea was to have a currency that wasn't controlled by any government so you could purchase all of your cocaine and heavy artillery anonymously. It wasn't an 'investment' but that's how people see it now.
The Irish government was not entitled to give them that tax rate. What you refer to as "their fair share" was just determined to not be a fair share.
Ignorance of the law is no defense, not for you, not for the Irish Government (which is bound by law to it's obligations under the treaties with Europe it has), not for Apple. Apple's lawyers could have looked at the law as well and said "we don't think we should take this deal because we don't think you can do that" but Apple chose to behave like an meth-head in a meth free-for-all and do the shortsighted thing instead.
And now they owe back taxes...
Don't be an apologist for these entities, they won't back you up either. Them (or anyone for that matter) not paying their taxes or dues deprives _you_ of things that you deserve.
I strongly recommend to dig a little deeper: taxes pay for common goods, such as sewers, roads, social services, fire brigades, police, trash pick-up, etc. These things and services take money to operate!
Sure, you work hard and earn money that way, that's excellent and no-one is taking nor are they trying to take this accomplishment away from you. But there are other things you use which you only paid for through your taxes. Depriving those entities of those taxes means that those services won't get provided to you... thus entities not paying their taxes deprive you of things you have 'earned' purely by virtue of being a human that lives in a particular locality.
Unless of course you live completely off-grid, don't use public roads, don't connect to sewer, public water, etc...
There are a couple of places in the world that don't levy taxes. I don't hear great things about their infrastructure or quality of life for their people.
I will gladly point you towards https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department for your further consideration, while warning you that it is intended as parody and farce, rather than a desired state of things.
> I strongly recommend to dig a little deeper: taxes pay for common goods, such as sewers, roads, social services, fire brigades, police, trash pick-up, etc. These things and services take money to operate!
Don't waste your breath- that account has consisted almost entirely of repetition of the usual right-wing "culture war" talking points and positions since its inception a couple of months back.
"> I strongly recommend to dig a little deeper: taxes pay for common goods, such as sewers, roads, social services, fire brigades, police, trash pick-up, etc. These things and services take money to operate!"
Yes, they do. OTOH, if you have a corporation in country as a "flag of convenience" to pay the least amount of taxes that is incurring very little in the way of public works costs, Bonus!
Interestingly, they support Lina Khan, the Biden appointed commissioner of the FTC and thus by implication their agenda..
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/09/lina-khan-federal-trade-commission-antitrust-monopolies
Depending on who wins the Whitehouse, it does look like it will be the US government screwing (monopolistic) American companies, like Apple, Google and many other tech companies…
Be interesting to see whether they implement the Russian law that impacts those with greater than a 50% market share…
> The world would be better off learning that reality.
The only "reality"- basic or otherwise- you've been interested in since joining a couple of months ago is the one you set up to suit your own ideological beliefs. Your account has been dominated by the usual stereotype right-wing talking points from the start.
I remember replying to your first comment (*), "welcoming" another account whose first post jumped straight in with another "culture war" totem, calling you out on that (**) and predicting we'd see more along those lines in future.
Bingo.
(*) Unless you'd made comments before *that* which had also been deleted for the same reason.
(**) Crap that- along with the replies- was later removed by the mods (and which I won't repost here for that reason), most likely because it was on a sensitive subject.
If you worked and paid taxes in the EU, you have contributed to the regeneration of Ireland. The Irish government’s private arrangement with Apple was a deliberate attempt to ripe you off.
Ie. You would have been able to keep more of what you earned.
It’s the challenge the UK had in the 1990s, people (including euro-sceptic Tories) were taken and complacent because the economy seemed to be doing well, so blinded themselves to the billions of investment in future growth that, because of their euro scepticism, was being diverted to Ireland. Now down the road, the UK is struggling…
"Now down the road, the UK is struggling…"
As is most of the EU.
All of Europe (not just the EU) suffers from a combination of old style conservatism, reluctance to adopt new ideas, a range of legislative, regulatory and fiscal straitjackets, an obsession with net zero regardless of the costs. The EU has already decided that AI is dangerous, and thus closed itself off to AI investment, but more generally Europe suffers from the old world disease of complacency and lack of energy, and under-investment in technology. The arguments about Eire vs the EU, the EU vs the UK, these are noise, what really matters is that Europe has persistently delivered slow growth and is unable to see any way of breaking out of that. Europe's largest economies (DE, UK, FR, IT) are all stuck in the doldrums, living standards have barely improved in a decade, and that's a problem for everybody. And it isn't materially affected by Brexit, by Ireland's sweetheart tax deals.
https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/economy/economy-why-europe-is-falling-behind-the-usa/
I'm not in the mood for a prolonged argument, so I won't bother challenging most of your points. However to say there is 'an obsession with net zero regardless of the costs' is laughable. The UK (and others) are trying their best to pay lip service to reducing climate change. The Tories net zero policy has been challenged in court twice and found wanting, and Labour's approach isn't much better (possibly worse, in fact).
a range of legislative, regulatory and fiscal straitjackets
Indeed. Reaganomics still casts a dark shadow across the West. Keyne's principles worked. It is bizarre that we have abandoned them so thoroughly.
The EU has already decided that AI is dangerous, and thus closed itself off to AI investment
As reported in these pages, the EU has diverted millions out the Horizon program that were intended for meaningful FOSS projects in favour of shovelling them into the AI hype train.
https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/economy/economy-why-europe-is-falling-behind-the-usa/
Interestingly, this article does not use the word "infrastructure". It just talks about R&D, as if business exists in a vacuum. When lauding the USA's growth, it makes no mention of Joe Biden dropping a trillion bucks into fixing the USA's broken roads, leaking dams and creaking bridges. It also doesn't mention rises in cost-of-living such as energy, housing, or everybody needing a car because public transport is often risible. What might budding entrepreneurs do with their new-found liquidity if they weren't struggling to pay their rent?
If you want to see GDP growth in the UK and Europe, then creating the conditions for growth would be a good start. Hook up high-speed rail between countries (TGV doesn't really hook up with Spain or France's HS networks properly). Pressure Germany to actually build some High Speed Rail so that - aside form domestic travel - people can get across from France to Denmark or down to Austria. National rollouts of gigabit fibre, where these have no existed - and of course tax multinationals adequately. The UK Govt are crowing today about AWS building £8Bn of new datacenters in the UK. I wonder how much tax Amazon or AWS will deign to pay, in pursuit of a robust power supply? Or do they just expect plebs like you and me to underwrite that on their behalf?
Which brings us on to "Net zero"? You mean "insulate ourselves from the whims of Putin and OPEC" surely? You can't have forgotten the 1970s energy crises?
I presume you live in an off-grid commune with no fall-back on public services - no healthcare, you don't use public roads. You engage private security and would never dream of falling back on the local Police or Fire Service in an emergency. Your security is also sufficiently militarised that you can arrange your own defence without relying on your nation's military.
You rely on all these things in your day to day life. When megacorps shirk their legal and social duty to pay tax, they shift that burden onto you (and onto people less able to pay than yourself).
The world would be better off learning that reality.
And that's before we get into the inflated value of most of these businesses due to illegal stock buybacks (and related insider trading), the replacement of actual sales with leasing and financial services, along with general funny accounting that shows fantastic "value" despite having stagnant real-world productivity.
I mean, nobody believes that the price of a new car is actually related to the objective, open-market sale value of the car right? People just look at the per-month payments for the next 3 years. The manufacturer can pluck whatever number they like out the air, and their finance arm can then write down the difference between that and the real-world value (when you sell it approved used, when a real price mechanism finally appears) as depreciation for tax purposes. It's a fantastic tax dodge to be able to decide that £10k of depreciation on a car is actually £20k because you arbitrarily "charged" your leasing business an extra £10k. Makes no difference to the customer but the accountants love it. So do the economists - look at all that extra imaginary GDP. Tax writeoffs, much shareholder value. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the economy.
If not, then it’s double tax a go-go
Foreign taxes paid are ALWAYS a credit to US taxes owed, regardless of tax treaties. You might have to provide more documentation (such as bank records) to prove you paid foreign taxes in a country with whom the US has no tax treaty. One of the purposes of those tax treatries is so the IRS can verify your claims of paying $50,000 in taxes in France or wherever when you take a $50,000 credit on your US taxes, without the tax treaty it is going to be on you to prove it to them - otherwise it would be easy to claim "hey I paid $1 million in taxes to North Korea, conveniently wiping out the $1 million I owe in taxes this year!"
So there is never double taxation for overseas income, unless you have no way to prove you paid taxes in another country. Not sure how that would be possible, unless the "tax" you paid was in the form of a bundle of cash to some government guy. Which then makes it a bribe, which is not something you can take as a credit, or even a deduction!
That would be this European Court of Justice then?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01/perry-anderson/ever-closer-union
"Today the court remains, of all Union institutions, the most withdrawn from the public. Discreetly situated in Luxembourg, not exactly a European crossroads, and composed of judges appointed – one per country – by member states, its proceedings are hidden from public scrutiny; its decisions permit no admission of dissent; its archives grant minimal access to researchers. In modus operandi, the ECJ is the antithesis of the US Supreme Court, whose emoluments it comfortably tops"
Apple are doomed to loose this one.
"Apple should learn to tighten better then. That way they won't lose those loose court cases."
It wasn't Apple that lost. Apple adhered to the regulations that Ireland imposed, but it was Ireland that was disallowed by the EU court to extend the arrangement to Apple in the first place. To me, that's a bit more ominous. You can be fined for following the law if some body decides that the law was not to be allowed, retroactively.
You are forgetting this was a “sweetheart” deal, known to be in breech of Irish law and EU rules (included in Irish law) at the time of negotiation by the Irish government.
There can be no doubt Apple and its advisors knew the deal broke the law. They hoped they would not get found out, but they were…
"There can be no doubt Apple and its advisors knew the deal broke the law. They hoped they would not get found out, but they were…"
On the contrary, the lower court decision shows that the deal was potentially legal, and therefore well worth taking. Most countries undertake dubious sweetheart deals or push the definitions of state aid in order to attract investment, retain jobs, or simply for reasons of cronyism. The only reason the EU picked on Ireland over this matter was because Ireland were unduly successful in attracting these businesses, and that pushed French, German and Luxembourgish noses out of joint. When it comes to stretching or breaking state aid rules, that's actually a French speciality, but the EU generally don't check on that, or Luxembourg's tax deals with the likes of Amazon.
Best case when it all started, it sticks, Apple are billions in pocket, only Irish taxpayers lose out. Worst case, deal is unravelled by the highest EU court, Apple have to pay what they owed, with interest some years later. The only penalty is the wasted legal fees Apple incurred steering this through the courts, and whilst they will be in the region of several tens of millions, that's small beer relative to the potential prize.
its decisions permit no admission of dissent
So... just like any top-level court then? Such as the Supreme Court in the US, a politically appointed court of a tiny number of judges, which appears to get stuffed with judges who share the political views of whoever is in power when a previous judge dies, and who get to sit on that court for the rest of their natural lives, no matter how senile? That paragon of justice? That court that can rule on constitutional matters (which the ECJ cannot), and which recently horrifically took away women's established reproductive rights in the US?
Yeah, I think I'd prefer to go with one that has representatives of all member nations, and who serve terms of six years, and require re-election beyond that, thanks.
From Wikipedia:
The Court of Justice consists of 27 Judges who are assisted by 11 Advocates-General. The Judges and Advocates-General are appointed by common accord of the governments of the member states and hold office for a renewable term of six years. The treaties require that they are chosen from legal experts whose independence is "beyond doubt" and who possess the qualifications required for appointment to the highest judicial offices in their respective countries or who are of recognised competence. In practice, each member state nominates a judge whose nomination is then ratified by all other member states.
So, yeah, about as fairly an appointed court as sensible people could come up with. It's amazing, though, what sort of picture you can paint by cherry-picking specific information and deliberately omitting the bigger picture.
Your axe must now be pretty sharp after all that grinding you obvious have to do.
The ECJ had a lot of fascists in it's original setup and has probably the best documented histgory of cronyism in the EU - which is saying something!
Have a look at the short history in the London Review of Books.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01/perry-anderson/ever-closer-union
It has been suspect right from the start:
"There were seven founding judges and two advocates-general. Who were they?
The Italian president of the court, Massimo Pilotti, had been deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations in the 1930s. There he acted as the long arm of the fascist regime in Rome, advising Mussolini on what counter-measures to take to shield Italy from condemnation by the League for its actions in Ethiopia.
On resigning his post in 1937, Pilotti took part in the celebrations in Genoa of the conquest of Ethiopia; and during the Second World War headed the high court of occupied Ljubljana after Italy’s annexation of Slovenia, where resistance was met with mass deportations, concentration camps, and police and military repression.
The German judge on the court, Otto Riese, was so devoted a Nazi that without any duress – he spent the war as an academic in Switzerland – he retained his membership of the NSDAP until 1945.
His compatriot Karl Roemer, an advocate-general to the court, spent the war in occupied Paris managing French companies and banks for the Third Reich; after the war, he married Adenauer’s niece, and acted as defence lawyer for the Waffen SS charged with responsibility for the massacre of the occupants of the French village of Oradour.
The other advocate-general, Maurice Lagrange, was a senior functionary in the Vichy government, fully committed to the ideology of a ‘National Revolution’ to sweep away the legacy of the Third Republic. Acting as link-man between the judicial apparatus of the Conseil d’État and the political apparatus of the Council of Ministers, Lagrange was in charge of co-ordinating the first wave of persecution of French Jews.
When Laval took over the reins of Vichy in 1942, transferring Lagrange back to the Conseil d’État, Pétain thanked him for his ‘rare perseverance’ in the regime’s legislative and administrative work, to which Lagrange replied that ‘for me it has been a great privilege to be so closely associated with the enterprise of national renovation you have undertaken for the salvation of our country. I am convinced that every Frenchman can and should take part in this work.’
Here's the answer.
The builder couldn't be arsed quoting, so pulled a figure out of his arse. The Dail thought "yeah seems fair" and accepted the quote. The builder, now with a job he doesn't want priced in a way that was obvious he didn't want started looking in to buying a yacht.
The end.
Another look at the Dail bike shelter, with some reasons given for cost.
https://extra.ie/2024/09/02/news/irish-news/bicycle-shed-leinster-house
"A new bicycle shed for Leinster House which allows for storage of 18 bicycles cost the public more than €335,000.
The shelter, which was hailed by Transport Minister Eamon Ryan as a good example of public sector climate action, even required archaeological advice to make sure it fit in at the parliamentary complex."
Three cheaper options are provided the following day, which would seem to suit. Maybe nobody got the usual three quotes.
https://extra.ie/2024/09/04/news/irish-news/leinster-house-bike-shelter
"The State could have saved well over €300,000 on the purchase of Leinster House’s bike shelter – as numerous companies sell similar models for far cheaper.
The 'Ark Cycle Shelter', which provides 20 bike spaces, is priced at €7,736 and comes in a range of colour options."
Ireland, apparently.
https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2024/0910/1469335-apple-analysis/
This suggests that the options are: 1) Pay off a bit of Ireland's EUR223B National Debt, 2) add it to some infrastructure funds which were set up to deal with windfall taxes from multinationals, or 3) immediately spend it on infrastructure. Nice little headache for the politicians. And with a General Election coming up too (before March 2025).
"5) Lower Ireland's corporate taxt rate to attract more multinationals."
That's been the sticking point, Ireland having one of the lowest tax rates of a developed nation. I'm sure there are others even lower but with a greater chance that the banks will be nationalized when the new dictator needs to replace his (it's always a he) fleet of Bentley's, Gulfstreams and luxury yachts.
The current international taxation arrangements have made corporate taxation an international market for multinationals. As with any other market you can compete best if you have lower expenses. A smaller than average country will have smaller than average expenses simply because it has less to spend its tax on. If it brings in multinationals whose regional offices boost its economy to way above average then its expenses can be met by charging a lower corporation tax and, incidentally, benefiting its "native" businesses. It's just simple arithmetic. Of course if, for some reason, those mulitnational corporations just decide to up and leave it's a bit disastrous.
A win-win for Ireland.
they offered Apple favourable terms to set up business in Ireland, from which they received a portion in form of what tax Apple did pay and income tax from Apple's employees.
and now they get the rest of the tax they would have had if they hadn't made a deal (provided that Apple still set up business in Ireland)
This post has been deleted by its author
Mr "Basic" here doesn't realise that the EU is bigger than the US, in terms of population. (...and rights, and living standards, etc. etc.)
To be fair, if they stopped selling Apple products in the EU, I think the overwhelming response there would be, "meh", and the overwhelming response from traders, to the plummeting stock price on the NASDAQ would be "AAAAAAARGH!"
Apple are unlikely to relocate their EU headquarters and all their staff to another EU country offering more favourable tax terms, unless it's really in their benefit to do so, and the costs of doing so would be huge, especially since I'm sure Irish employment law is much fairer to employees than US "at will" employment law, so there would be massive severance and relocation pay costs.
Europe is responsible for occupying countries for centuries. If you look at history, they started the slavery system and initiated two world wars. Now, they are trying to start a third one with Russia. The European mentality is like Hitler’s. Maybe it’s time for the USA to avoid the EU and join with Russia and China.
To be fair they have consistently used the same user id for some years and not hidden behind AC.
The problem with this AC is that we have no knowledge as to whether this is their first post or not.
I would hope ElReg change their commenting rules: No AC posts by user ids who haven’t been members for at least a few months and have not posted a number of comments in the open.
Ie. You can’t just create a new id and start trolling as AC.
Not sure if serious. The "facemask" is automatically attached to *all* anonymous posts, including this one and, er, your post above.
I can't remember whether this was always the case, but- as far as I can tell- you have neither the choice of changing that icon *nor* of turning it off if you're posting anonymously.
To be fair they have consistently used the same user id for some years and not hidden behind AC.
We've absolutely no way of knowing how many of their posts have been posted anonymously. I post some things AC myself, if I decide they reveal too much about my real-life identity (I have no desire to be doxxed by some incel in a basement), or revel details of who I work for and where I work.
We also have no idea how many accounts they have. I suspect at least one of them has a second account used for up-voting their own posts, and down-voting dissenters, as those votes always seem to come in pairs.
As for the consistency of user IDs, I changed my handle a few years back; my posting history goes back to 2008, which is about the same amount of time one of these accounts has been active, but you'll only see my posts from the last time I changed it. I'm not sure why El Reg does this, but I'm assuming it's to protect people's identities, if one of their previous handles was actually their real name.
Agree, with all your points and likewise have occasionally used AC.
As for other accounts, I suspect neither had anything to do with ElRon (who was largely erased by El Reg some years back).
Consistency/longevity, yes that is important, although appearance can be deceptive…
Compare a recent post with an ancient post and we get consistency. Unless they are certifiable Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, we haven’t seen a bunch of other users writing stuff sufficiently similar for someone here to query. Plus none of their stuff is in the same league of trolling as the above AC.
"I would hope ElReg change their commenting rules: No AC posts by user ids who haven’t been members for at least a few months and have not posted a number of comments in the open."
And also limit them to a small percentage of total posts. It would also be useful to number the A/Cs in any given thread so if we hav e A/C's comment commented on by and A/C and that in turn commented on by an A/C a numbering system would tell you if the 3rd comment was by A/C 1 or by a 3rd A/C joining in.
I'm pretty sure both the Roman and Greek empires extended well outside of Europe. Rome conquered large parts of North Africa, Including Egypt, and Greek interests at one point covered large parts of what is modern Turkey, and their influence went right up into the Balkans. Hint: the Cyrillic writing system used in Russia was brought there by Saint Cyril, who was a Greek.
Anyway, the idea that the notion of slavery was somehow invented in Europe is laughable. The industrialised slave trade, maybe, but then I think those in the US might have a touch of culpability there, especially in continuing it after others had given it up as a bad idea (to employ understatement, before someone goes off on one telling me it was more than just a bad idea). There is evidence for slavery in prehistory pretty much everywhere, including the Americas prior to European colonisation, and pretty much all of Asia, and it's very telling of a US-centric mindset that human history started with the creation of the US.
Yes, very WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).
It's also worth remembering that the "founding fathers" who were "fleeing religious persecution" like to omit the bit where it was them doing the persecuting, and that's why they had to flee. This also explains the irrationally high level of religiosity in the US, when religious belief is on the decline in most other democratic nations.
It is very telling of the communist ideology of woke and feminism that deeply envy the extraordinary gains for the entire Human race of said "men of white European descent". Show me what the Islamic Caliphate/Palestinian terrorists/Failed African states ..., etc, etc. have provided to Humanity?
EM: Anyway, the idea that the notion of slavery was somehow invented in Europe is laughable. The industrialised slave trade, maybe, but then I think those in the US might have a touch of culpability there, especially in continuing it after others had given it up as a bad idea (to employ understatement, before someone goes off on one telling me it was more than just a bad idea).
cow: Exactly.
Funny how the black americans never mention that their fellow brothers were the ones who sold blacks to the europeans in the first place. The entire atlantic slave trade was fuelled by slaves cpatured by other black nations for money.
~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script
EtymologySince the script was conceived and popularised by the followers of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria, rather than by Cyril and Methodius themselves,[11] its name denotes homage rather than authorship.
Consider it as going on strike. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. Shut down the services in Europe, and when everyone's phones and computers simply stop working, maybe the politicians will stop trying to screw the American companies. It's just a strike for fair laws. Until then, no phones, no email services, nothing.
"Consider it as going on strike. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon. Shut down the services in Europe, and when everyone's phones and computers simply stop working, maybe the politicians will stop trying to screw the American companies."
It's more that these companies will move their major corporate offices someplace else taking a load of high paying jobs with them and leaving behind an expensive high rise that landlords will find impossible to lease to new tenants until it's ordered demolished being an eyesore and covered in dozens of layers of spray paint.
"Until then, no phones, no email services, nothing."
Listen for the screaming of the stock exchange as cutting off a bloc with a larger population than the US would likely slaughter share prices in an irrational act of self harm.
I, however, would welcome it. Sure, there will be short term pain and plenty of chaos (who can read a map these days?), but maybe just maybe European providers will get up off their fat arses and start to provide services so that we are no longer beholden to the privacy-pillaging offerings from overseas.
Sounds good to me. You do realise people can still use services not from American organisations? In fact, we'd survive quite happily after a short adjustment period.
I at home host and run all my own infrastructure and systems. I'd not notice if they all disappeared overnight.
However, no sane business is walking away from the EU without a legal order to do so and even then there would be an alternative service spun up quickly enough.
Let me try to spell this out for you in very easy words.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon all make profits selling things in Europe.
Europe is big. It's bigger than you think. And people in Europe have quite a lot of money to buy from them. So the profits they make in Europe are also very big.
If they did what you suggest their overall profits would be a lot smaller. Their shareholders would get very cross. Very, very cross. Probably cross enough to vote out the entire boards of directors.
The directors are paid a lot to be part of those boards. They would get very upset at the thought of being fired and no longer being paid all that money.
Because they want to keep their jobs they're not going to shut down operations in Europe.
If you still find this hard to understand find a grown up you can explain to to you again. Or, when you get old enough to go to school, your teachers might explain it.
By the way, quite a lot of those shareholders who would get cross live in Europe.
Haha.
I love it when Americans think they are the best, and then i go and watch a few YT videos and see homeless people and garbage in all their big cities... then i look at cities in my own country.
You can go hours in Australia and never see a single homeless person. You will need to walk around Sydney CBD for hours befor eyou find a single homeless person and their boxes and trollies of their goods. However in the US we all know you only have to walk less than 5 minutes and yoi will find a horde.
Of course America is the best keep telling yhourself that.
"Did you read the story? It's in escrow, which means it already has been, but not yet released."
Since money is fungible, it could still flow back to Apple in other ways in compensation. The courts look like they're sticking it to the big companies, the local politicians have fought for something and Apple will have been seen paying their "fair share", whatever that means. Face for everybody but nothing really has happened once the smoke has cleared. The trick is keeping the smoke in place until people stop trying to see through it.
You should be singing "The Lumberjack Song" by Monty Python for all the "sense" that statement con9. What is it with this perverse American belief that they have the "right" to do whatever the hell they want regardless of legality because "hey, we're Americans - we're the ones with the nukes."
""You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means""
fungible /fŭn′jə-bəl/
adjective
Returnable or negotiable in kind or by substitution, as a quantity of grain for an equal amount of the same kind of grain.
Money goes back to Apple in the same amount as they are forced to pay, but not the "same" money as it's the value that counts. I believe I've used the word properly. If I borrow $100 dollars from you and you lend it to me as 5x $20 bills, I will have paid you back if I hand you a single $100 note. It's the same thing since it's the value that's important, not the little green pieces of paper.
So what does the fungibility of money have to do with apple having to pay out the money that was in escrow? That's going to go from their books to those of the Irish treasury, they won't be getting it back. it's unlikely they'd see a tax write-off in the US, as those earnings that they didn't pay tax on weren't in the US to start with, and they wouldn't have had to pay taxes on any of it until they tried to "onshore" it back to the US. They are taxes owed by an EU subsidiary located outside of the US, specifically for tax reasons.
So, yes, money is fungible in the sense that one dollar bill is (nominally) worth the same as any other, but the unpaid taxes aren't fungible, as in they pay them in Ireland, but in no way get the same amount of money back. Again, you've either misunderstood the concept of fungibility, or woefully misapplied it.
Furthermore, the idea that they'd get the money back somehow, from the Irish government fails to understand the reasons why this all started: illegal state aid. If someone in the Irish government decided to now give the same kickback to Apple, it would still amount to illegal state aid, as there are laws in most places that prohibit the payment of public funds to private entities for favours gained. That sort of corruption would be noticed doubly so, due to the fact that there has been this long, drawn-out case with a final decision in the EU's highest court all about it. Your original post remains complete fantasist nonsense.
Despite what all the sovereignty-crybabies keep wailing about, it's fairly difficult for the EU to tell its member nations what to do. It takes very convoluted processes that take a lot of time, as in this case. Usually, when a politician says "the EU told us to do that", they are omitting an implicit "...and we agreed wholeheartedly" or "...and I got something I really wanted in return".
This is very much by design, and every time someone proposes to make it more efficient, the aforementioned sovereignty-crybabies wail up a storm. This is their right, mind you, it's all part of living in a democracy; the only thing that irks me is that one of their favorite arguments is that the EU is inefficient. It's a bit like complaining that there's a draft in your living room, and getting mad at someone who suggests closing the window.
> Eu tells its members all sorts of laws such as immigration & border policy
Free movement of workers who are citizens of EU members was negotiated as part of the Single Market, its what permitted me to jump on a plane in England, visit Amsterdam and then hope on another plane to Paris, before returning home, no visa/work permit required and thus run a pan-European team (of mostly UK nationals) from the UK; not so easy now…
The individual members had total freedom to set rules and regulations about non-EU immigration etc. The problem we have in the UK is that Westminster didn’t really want to control the borders and non-Eu immigration, even though they talked tough.
One of the reasons given before the 2016 referendum for why the UK should leave the EU was because many of the other members were playing lip service to the rules, whereas the UK was trying to actually play by the rules.
It is clear there are people, such as Margrethe Vestager, who also want and was/is prepared to stand up and enforce the rules every member agreed to.
Well, yes and no. There was an awful lot of disinformation about what those regulations actually are. For instance the one about bananas, which the europhobes like to spew a different version of each time. Was it that we can't have bendy bananas any more, or straight ones? I can't remember. The actual underlying regulation there, is a boring bit about the standardisation of labelling, so that everyone agrees on what "class A" produce is, and the example given being that an excessively curved banana, which would be an indication of sub-standard produce, would have to be labelled as "class B" instead. Its hardly jack-booted-thugs-coming-for-you-at-dawn level stuff.
It seems some people just don't like to have standards, agreed by everyone, or that they don't like the fact that, once decided and agreed upon, they might be expected to uphold them along with everyone else. It all stems from some xenophobic idea that British people are somehow superior and know better than "Johnny Foreigner", and some paranoid ideation about how there must be a secret cabal "in Brussels" trying to tell them what time to go to bed. All quite pathetic, really, but a lot of otherwise sensible people fell for this sort of rhetoric.
Most EU legislation is about citizen protection, consumer (and producer) protection being part of that. It's not surprising given the circumstances in which its forerunner was set up after WWII. Whatever issues it might have I look very, very suspiciously at any politician who removed a large chunk of my protections as a citizen and wants to remove more.
I wasn’t referring to the regulations, just the problems of getting around the favouritism, remember the ruling about government spend over a certain level had to go out to EU wide procurement and other regulations that sought to create a more level playing field, but even then some played fast and loose and awarded the contract to the domestic supplier.
As many have noted, the UK has rather along of businesses (especially in the energy, water and railway sectors) that are owned by EU HQ’d businesses, but UK businesses achieving a similar level of market penetration in those countries… Basically, the Single Market was and still is, work in progress, however it is streets ahead of the WTO and other trading blocs.
The money in question has been in an escrow account during the legal proceedings, meaning that it’s not a fine, per se. Instead, that money will now be released to Ireland. Apple, in return, will probably get a nice tax credit from US government for future revenues earned outside US.
Apple's external accountants, Flanigan's Legal Shenanigans, LLC, and corporate counsel, Dewey, Cheatem & Howe, PLC, had no comment on the matter.
A highly-placed Apple executive, speaking on a condition of anonymity said, "Ehhh, you win some, and you lose some. Well ... if you're as big as we are, you do win most of 'em."
In reality (and I admit I am Irish) this is a case of the politics of envy. The EU are hard-left socialists who hate anyone who engages - in the actual words of the Soviet queen, Margrethe Vestager, in - "all forms of tax avoidance and competitive advantages for tech giants and large corporations within the European Union". Hate crime anyone?
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