Apple is happy with their tax arrangement with Ireland. Ireland is happy with their tax arrangement with Apple. But the EUreaucrats are the bigger gangsters, so they are demanding their pound of flesh.
by James Corbett
The International Forecaster
Word to the wise: when you play a rigged game in a mobster-run casino, don’t expect to walk away with all your winnings. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
[…] Regardless of whether he knew it or not, Apple CEO Tim Cook just learned that lesson the hard way. In 2013 the European Commission began investigating Apple’s tax deals with Ireland. In 2014 it came out with its formal allegation, namely that the taxation deals worked out between the government of Ireland and Apple’s Irish subsidiaries in 1991 and 2007 constituted a violation of Article 108(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (which, as we all know, relies on Aritcle 107(1)‘s definition of activities “incompatible with the internal market” of the EU).
This scrutiny naturally comes in response to Apple’s employment of the trusty old “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” tax strategy, among other gambits.
Clear as mud? Good.