News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point. Parent comment

Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by objclxt on Thursday September 01, 2016 @08:26AM (#12404700)
> 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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by Nursie on Thursday September 01, 2016 @09:19AM (#12404990)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by pjc50 on Thursday September 01, 2016 @09:19AM (#12404993)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Tax Expert Takes Tim Cook's EU Letter Apart Point by Point by lhopki01 on Thursday September 01, 2016 @09:11AM (#12404935)
It's not a new law.
[ Parent | on HN ]