A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point

Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by gambiting on Thursday September 01, 2016 @06:38AM (#12404212)

As a business owner, I actually was in a situation where my local tax authority said one thing, then came back to me 2 years later, said they were wrong, and now I had to pay 2 years worth of taxes because of their mistake. It's BS and it can ruin your company totally. If a tax authority tells you how much you owe, it should be binding - so in this way, if Ireland charged Apple too little, they should be at fault here. If EC now rules that Ireland undercharged them and haven't collected 14BN in taxes, then Ireland should be to blame.

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Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by tw04 on Thursday September 01, 2016 @07:09AM (#12404327)

If you jumped through all the hoops Apple did to try to evade paying taxes, you should know you're playing Russian roulette. Apple knew going into it that they were intentionally evading taxes - hell they hired several special tax accountants just to manage the cf required to make all this work. They were just assuming (hoping?)they had enough grease to keep the loophole open - they were wrong.

I believe they even called the liability out in their s1 filings, but I can't currently check.

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Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by blub on Thursday September 01, 2016 @06:46AM (#12404255)

Your case is very different and it sounds like you were treated unfairly.

Re Apple: I am ok if Ireland gets the blame. Probably should be split though, since Apple knew very well what they were doing.

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Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by ensignavenger on Thursday September 01, 2016 @09:54AM (#12405241)

Unfair, yes, but that is how tax law works in the US. Of course, he could challenge it in court and hope the judge sides with the original interpretation of the law. Also, there is limit to how many years back they can go in such a case.

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Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by Silhouette on Thursday September 01, 2016 @01:33PM (#12407250)

I sympathise, and I would agree that if you take official advice from your tax authority on some point, that should set an upper bound on your tax obligations.

It doesn't help that bad or just plain wrong advice is given all the time by the tax authorities, at least in my country. I no longer even bother asking them about most things, because the last few times I called with a relatively straightforward business question, they still managed to give me completely wrong answers (always in their favour, naturally). The reason I know that is because when I was surprised by those answers and then took independent advice, the independent advisors used the tax authority's own official documentation to show me why what they told me was incorrect...

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Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by dagaci on Thursday September 01, 2016 @06:56AM (#12404287)

I have many times been in the situation of having paid to much tax (not my fault) and have received relatively large cheques automatically from the government as a result. This year they calculated that i have underpaid taxes (not my fault) for a year. The government have been automatically deducting a small amount over the year from me via the tax system.

So i have been happy to receive cheques from the government years later for over paying, and actually nonchalant about the deductions.

But what is important is that the rules to apply equally to everyone, and they should also apply to businesses large businesses and small businesses, and mega businesses.

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