And it's honestly one of the bigger problems of the world today. There was a Planet Money episode where they presented the data from jobs "created" in Kansas and Missouri through tax breaks. It was something like: Kansas stole 5000 jobs from Missouri through relocation of offices in Kansas City, and Missouri stole 4000 jobs from Kansas the same way. So millions offered to companies to get a net benefit of basically zero.
It's the equivalent of paying everyone the same wage. Countries are going to aggressively compete for talent just like companies do. And whether it's offering them different tax rates, amending employment laws, building infrastructure for them etc countries are going to bend over backwards.
It is solvable through international agreements between countries. Unfortunately those tend to defend companies more than individuals.
But hey, maybe the recent TTIP backlash and apparent failure is part of a positive trend.
From my perspective (as a EU citizen), it is the right thing to do (no allowing special deals). How is that a fair landscape for competition? It's not. If you want to do business in the EU, you have to obey EU laws, just like everybody else.
Furthermore, government officials agreeing to tax cuts should be tried for abuse of public assets, in my opinion. That's however a separate issue in this case, Apple does no obey EU law no matter how guilty politicians are.
Giving a tax break to some specific kind of company (e.g plumbers or taxi companies) sounds dubious but doable.
To my ears this just sounds like the Irish government tried to "make a good deal" with Apple, but the law doesn't allow it. Which sounds obvious.
It feels like a clash of company and government culture: the US one where companies try to get "deals" from states in return for doing business there, and the European one where they can't.
This is NOT extortion or bribery, just everyday business. It happens every single day even between US states, not to mention nation-states. Business is competitive and that's a good thing.
AAPL in this case has deferred taxes on profits with their structural arrangement, NOT avoided them. To call it theft is extremely ignorant of how taxes and governments work.