They broke the law, Apple and Ireland. Just because Ireland is a country it doesn't mean it can't be subject to laws.
> "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover". The European Commission found that corporate tax rates as low as 0.005% paid by the tech giant represented an unlawful subsidy. Specifically because other companies were not permitted to obtain the same tax arrangements. As a consequence Apple must pay €13 billion, excluding interest, to the Irish Treasury.
Did they really break the law? I’m not a fan of Apple and their aggressive walled gardens and general hostility. But I feel like the tax optimization with Ireland is well known to everyone and wasn’t an issue until now. It seems dishonest to go back and demand retroactive taxes afterwards. And I bet they aren’t the only company in this situation so are they being singled out unfairly?
State aid to private companies is outright illegal in the EU. It's a matter of finding out how far back this continuous state aid goes to figure out the total.
You only get caught at the end of the illegal activity, but you're responsible for all of it.
My EU country has the concept of "done continuously" to any criminal code article, including tax evasion and all other provisions, and I'm pretty sure it's an EU-wide concept, where penalties go up by a percentage if the crimes were done continuously over a period of time. So breaking the law continuously also matters, not only at the time of getting caught.
What I don't agree with is Apple getting fined. Apple needs to pay the proper taxes for the entire period of getting state aid, but Ireland should get the penalty for subsidising a private company, am infringement procedure should determine that.
They broke the law indeed. It was a legally untested tax structure that was found to be illegal all along. This also is not the first time the European courts have told member states to stop preferential treatment in tax deals.
It's funny that you say it was well known to everyone and also wasn't an issue. It was well known because precisely because it was an issue.
If a company and country are dishonest about the tax deals they illegally make it's pretty dishonest to call it dishonest to demand the taxes are back payed.
This ruling applies to all the illegal tax schemes European countries have been using. So there are definitely other companies getting the bill as well.
It wasn't even well known until very late into the 2000s (even early 2010) when Apple actually started to make a lot of money and got a lot more scrutiny.
Because it is pretty simple, you don't really care about a struggling company or one that just gets by, even if their marginal tax rate is lower than it is supposed to be, since there isn't much to be taxed the difference is minimal in any case.
However, if the company is extremely successful and makes big money the difference is absurd and it actually becomes unfair for everyone (both other companies who have to play by the rules, and citizens who get taxed more than a filthy rich corp).
And this is the real reason it "became" a problem and took a while to resolve. Had Apple stayed a relatively small company with small sales numbers in the EU (and thus small profits) the deal would have probably not have much scrutiny and even if it had, it probably wouldn't have gotten any focus.
It would have cost more money in legislators time than it would have brought in anyway, even though the deal was fundamentally unfair. But life is generally unfair, so it doesn't matter that much.
According to the EU's highest court they did and that's all that matters. I think you're trying to say that that if you or the US believes that the EU is wrong regardless of EU decisions the US is justified in attacking.
My original comment is pointing out that the current admin seems willing to bully other countries using international trade.
So the EU goes after US tech companies, US tech companies flock to Trump, Trump attacks the EU
> According to the EU's highest court they did and that's all that matters
Its like saying Euros shouldn't be upset by american tariffs because they are legal per american laws and thats all that matters.
I still don't get why Euros are so freaking upset that USA decided it wants to operate differently. Why doesn't usa have that right.
edit: for butthurt euros calling me names below, Apple's claim is that The EU did not have specific rules in place prohibiting Ireland’s tax policies when Apple benefited from them. It even won its appeal on EU court in 2020 on that basis.
Its time for countries like India to claw back taxes that european companies didn't pay during colonization.
> USA can makeup whatever laws it wants and apply them retroactively too
Which shows how little understanding you have of this topic. This isn't a new law, at all. The tax has always been owed, because state aid / state subsidy has always been illegal in the EU. No new law is being applied retroactively here.
It's not a retroactive law. It's a law not being followed. If you decide to not file your taxes properly and need to pay all the tax you owe after getting found out the law did not change.
i am talking about all the hilarious whining thats goin on over tarrifs and what not after they just genocided whole continents. Trump might be the biggest bufoon of all time but he is giving euros a little taste of their own medicine and its amazing to watch.
Euros need to accept their lower status in the world due to their economic decline. They are still hanging on to some racist colonial thinking they are still the top dog.
They are same as phillipines or bangladesh when it comes to relationship with USA. They don't get some special ally status bases on their racist ideas.
They will have to pay similar back taxes to former colonies soon now that they don't have big brother protecting them.
I think you are ignorant about law in general and European institutions. European Court of Justice is established in 1952. European Economic Community is established in 1957. Ireland joined the European communities in 1972.
The court order is just, as Apple didn't pay fair amount of taxes from whole EU operations. This makes it an EU matter. They just need to pay their taxes.
Of all the countries to have a bitcoin strategic reserve, the US is where it makes the least sense. Replacing a reserve currency they control with another they can't.
...is what most free speech proponents say until they discover child pornography, and then say "well, impossible for anything except child pornography", and then they discover...
That is not a problem to solve by internet blocking. That's a problem to be solved by tracking down the sources and arresting them so they can't make more. Blocking doesn't stop the underlying abuse. And blocking is too dangerous of a capability to exist, because it can and will be abused.
Why are you concerned about the dangers of internet blocking but not of physical imprisonment? Arrest is also a dangerous capability because you can arrest your opponents and use the fear that creates to control people. Abuse of arrests is substantially worse because being arrested means that you lose both your physical and digital freedom, whereas being blocked only restricts your digital freedom. Many people think that such a capability as a response to online acts should not exist which is why Tor exists despite over half of traffic on the Tor network being related to CP.
All things should exist in reasonable degrees. Arrests and blocks are legitimate tools that should be used to keep people safe, but their use should be accountable and subject to due criticism. You can't weasel out of absolutism by overloading alternative solutions unless you also explain why such tools are meaningfully different.
One of my controversial opinions is that I think the Tor network strikes a good balance. Occasional vulnerabilities and raids keep those perpetuating the most severe long-term abuse on their toes, while the scarcity of such exploits facilitates the short-term censorship resistance necessary to serve as a backup for censored communications during political turbulence.
Arrest can only happen when someone is subject to a jurisdiction (or somewhere with an extradition treaty), which is an added layer of protection. And it's a heavier tool, which means it gets used in fewer and more serious cases.
Blocking can shape a whole society.
Also, arrest is the appropriate tool to stop something bad from happening, rather than just hiding it.
(And to be clear, this is all about things that a government is restricting, which should be few and far between. Private sites can block whatever users they wish.)
Exactly, which mitigates abuse only to the same degree that it mitigates your own response to the solution to child pornography. Either the necessary custody chains needed to enforce laws overseas exist or they don't, you can't have it both ways.
It is a heavier tool, but it's also a more severe tool, I'm not sure I understand this objection.
Blocks and arrests both serve to reduce the occurrence of bad things because bad things require delivery and arrests take time and are sometimes not possible. Disbanding the drug cartels in Brazil and Mexico would be the best solution to the flow of drugs into the U.S, but that's hard and even at best will take a long time, so in the meantime countries settle for trying to stop drugs at the border instead. The response to overseas distribution of child pornography should be similar.
My objection is precisely that the important thing is to stop abuse, and that blocking just hides something rather than tracking down and stopping the abuse.
(To be clear, I do also think it's important to go track down the sites hosting such content and take down the sites. But at the source, not blocking at the border, which is a capability that shouldn't exist.)
Also, at the risk of unrelated political commentary:
> Disbanding the drug cartels in Brazil and Mexico would be the best solution to the flow of drugs into the U.S,
Legalization would be the best solution to the association between drugs and organized crime.
> My objection is precisely that the important thing is to stop abuse, and that blocking just hides something rather than tracking down and stopping the abuse.
(To be clear, I do also think it's important to go track down the sites hosting such content and take down the sites. But at the source, not blocking at the border, which is a capability that shouldn't exist.)
I don't think you've justified that objection any other way than saying "stopping it at the source would be better" (which is unambiguously agreeable).
Teaching a man to fish is obviously better than just giving him a fish, but if tuition is not possible due to resource constraints, a fish distribution system isn't a terrible idea.
I am stating the position that the ability for governments to block part of the Internet rather than it being all or nothing is a net negative for the world.
The US has no allies, only interests. It interests us to be adversarial to Russia. It interests us to "bomb brown people". None of which is done out of some moral duty.
Is this supposed to be some insight? The very definition of "alliance" says: groups or people who work together because of shared interests. You ally because you share interests, e.g. a specific goal.
No, but safety risks are potential securities law violations and a confidentiality agreement that inhibits employees talking to the SEC about anything freely is a SEC violation in itself
> I don't understand. Isn't that a case where "allowed by law"?
If you mean an NDA that says “you agree not to disclose any of our secrets unless required by law” which would clear you if questioned in court or by police etc. I think the SEC see that language as trying to stop employees/whistleblowers going to the SEC with concerns (which people aren't 'required' to do)
> Before taking the reins of the country, Erdoğan famously said that democracy was a tram you get off when you reach your destination. He did, indeed, get off the democracy tram once he had accumulated enough power.
Canada literally have generational politicians in ballot. Same families for 100+ years. I don't see how voting even remotely important here. There is no tangible differences between parties either.
Our electoral system sucks, that's our main problem in my opinion. But there is a difference between, say, the Cons on one side and the NDP/Greens on the other.
I'm thinking a lot about this in the context of what's going on in the US where we're seeing a human rights regression of sorts in many aspects (reproductive rights, free speech, role of law enforcement, etc) unlike in most (all?) other developed nations where the trend is the other way.
Human rights are only considered human rights because lots of people believe in them. It's not a universal rule of nature, societies are free to depart from them if they choose to do so. Who are we to force our worldview on a group of people that as a majority has chosen to live life in a different way?!
Personally I'm just lucky to be able to choose where I live so that my world views somewhat matches the values of the people around me. Not everyone is that lucky though. Especially marginalized people.
I don't think any one disagrees with this. I do think the poster meant your pithy quote about violence against the government is not any where appropriate in Canada at the moment, or at any point in the past or any foreseeable point in the future.
In 2006, the Palestinian political entity operating in the West Bank and Gaza staged elections. Little did observers know that it would be the last vote allowed by the Palestinian Authority, led then, as it is now, by President Mahmoud Abbas. The vote took place in the aftermath of a turbulent series of events: the fiery years of the second intifada, the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and the 2005 Israeli withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.
The election yielded a shock victory for Hamas, which won the most seats with some 44 percent of the vote.
Further in the artcle: "Seventy-two percent of respondents said they believed the Hamas decision to launch the cross-border rampage in southern Israel was "correct" given its outcome so far, while 22% said it was "incorrect". The remainder were undecided or gave no answer."
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons.
> A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons.
If you honestly believe this comparison makes sense, then you are saying that Hamas is misleading Palestinians as to their motivation for attacking Israeli civilians.
The comparison is the context of the war in Iraq being more popular amongst Americans than the actions of Hamas amongst Palestinians (if we all use shitty polls as the basis of our facts for killing people). Many here know how popular that particular military action is.
Nevertheless; Hamas said that its fight was against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project, Israel.
Thus it is either true that Israel is “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist”. Or when Hamas says that is why they are attacking Israel it is misleading the Palestinian people. You are welcome to select either assertion.
If the Jewish prisoners of a Nazi concentration camp revolted and killed their guards, would they not be justified? When the cargo of the La Amistad revolted and killed their captors, were they not justified? The actions of Hamas were vile, but I can't blame the oppressed from lashing out against the oppressor.
> If the Jewish prisoners of a Nazi concentration camp revolted and killed their guards, would they not be justified? When the cargo of the La Amistad revolted and killed their captors, were they not justified? The actions of Hamas were vile, but I can't blame the oppressed from lashing out against the oppressor.
The problem with your comparison is that Hamas attacks, as a matter of policy, civilians. A reasonable person would not claim that those civilians are holding Hamas captive.
So people of a land fighting for their freedom is categorized as terrorists?
I believe in colonialism age, organization like HAMAS is categorized as guerrilla fighters.
Why is it different now?
More nuance would be helpful. The third paragraph from the article you linked says:
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its military forces from Gaza, dismantled its settlements, and implemented a temporary blockade of Gaza. The blockade became indefinite after the 2007 Hamas takeover, supported by Egypt through restrictions on its land border with Gaza.[14] Despite the Israeli disengagement, the United Nations (UN), the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many human-rights organizations continue to consider Gaza to be held under Israeli military occupation, due to what they consider Israel's effective military control over the territory; Israel disputes that it occupies the territory.[15][16][17] The current blockade by Israel and Egypt prevents people and goods from freely entering or leaving the territory, leading to Gaza often being called an "open-air prison."[18][19] The UN, as well as at least 19 human-rights organizations, have urged Israel to lift the blockade.[20] Israel has justified its blockade on the strip with wanting to stop flow of arms, but Palestinians and rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment and exacerbates dire living conditions.
> In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew its military forces from Gaza, dismantled its settlements, and implemented a temporary blockade of Gaza. The blockade became indefinite after the 2007 Hamas takeover, supported by Egypt through restrictions on its land border with Gaza.
Also, I guess Egypt is also occupying Gaza according to you?
The user is choosing out of an artificial lack of better options, which Apple can only get away with by having a big share in the US market. In markets where they are not dominant, the consumer benefits.
I'm the user and I know what I'm doing. I'm not being tricked into anything. I'm trying to avoid a certain type of personality that thinks they are saving the world.
The first amendment in the bill of rights in the US constitution prevents the US government from restricting the speech of US citizens. It doesn’t say anything about foreign nationals with no status in the US. The government also has the authority to deport whomever it likes, impose tariffs and restrict imports.
Regardless of moral stance, that is the reality as I see it.
The first amendment prevents the US govt from restricting the speech of anyone in the US, not just citizens.
For example, the government cannot deport an immigrant simply because they criticized the government (they can deport for a variety of other reasons though).
> courts will not look behind [the] decision [not to waive the statutory exclusion of an alien] or weigh it against the First Amendment interests of those who would personally communicate with the alien
Interesting. Yeah, I'm broadly not sure how the first amendment applies to this TikTok bill, if at all.
I think TikTok is a security risk, but it seems to me that if the govt can ban TikTok, it can legally ban any foreign media. Which doesn't seem ideal from a free speech perspective.
160 million US citizens post/watch those videos on tiktok, tiktok is their platform for expressing themselves, by banning tiktok, they can argue that the government is taking away their platform for expressing themselves.
Well I love this type of articles, written by outsiders that don't particularly care about their sponsors. Like a Hunter S. Thompson article about a culinary festival that devolves into the morality of cooking seafood alive.
> "Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover". The European Commission found that corporate tax rates as low as 0.005% paid by the tech giant represented an unlawful subsidy. Specifically because other companies were not permitted to obtain the same tax arrangements. As a consequence Apple must pay €13 billion, excluding interest, to the Irish Treasury.