Yes, I would. I am not particularly happy with what US politicians do with windfalls. It's not a US vs Euro issue for me. I'm talking about individual vs collective body.

Just as an example, NYC recently sued BNP and used the money partly to buy iPads and iPhones for the police force. Even if a wrong is done, the primary victims are rarely the main beneficiaries and the funds just increase the ever growing administrative state and encourages future shake-downs

> The city has already pledged some of the money toward equipping police officers with 41,000 iPads and iPhones, part of a joint, $160-million initiative with Mr. Vance’s office.

[0] http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2015/05/01/french-bank-settl...

Ok, I understand where you're coming from, but I still don't understand why you would reflexively always side with corporations/shareholders vs the government. Clearly the government needs to raise some tax revenue, in order to fund programs like the US Military and Medicare. And given that the government needs to raise some amount of tax revenue, they will need to put in place tax laws, and there will always be some corporations that try to skirt those tax laws in order to maximize their own profits. In cases where the corporation has genuinely broken the laws, even if it's an "honest mistake", they will need to make amends.

If we applied your principle of universally siding with corporations/individuals paying less taxes than they are supposed to, then no one would pay taxes at all and the government would cease to exist.

If you think that the current tax rates are too high, then start/join a political lobby that seeks to reform the tax system. But given that we do have a current set of tax laws, it doesn't make any sense to universally support those who have been found to violate those laws.

> If Apple was similarly accused of wrongdoing by the IRS, and told to backpay taxes that they were supposed to have paid, would you still feel similarly?

But that's not what's happening, really. If as an individual the IRS wrote to you and said "look, all your tax returns in previous years were in compliance with the law, but we've now decided those laws were wrong and you owe us more money" you might understandably be a little annoyed.

There's a reason that in most (but not all) cases we don't allow new laws to be retroactively applied - because we recognize it to be unfair.

That's not what really happened here though - the court found that they were in contravention of existing law all along. It's not a change in law or retroactive application of new law.

The proper US analogy would be some sort of state level tax break that was later declared unconstitutional and the tax refund you got having to be repaid.

It's not a new law.