The article may be referring to 'sweetheart deals' Apple struck with Ireland: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/apple-ordere...

According to the article, Apple paid an effective corporate tax rate of 0.005% on European profits, which resulted in the EU claiming 11B in back taxes.

Regarding monopoly-status: could you state your sources for the 15% figure?

Lastly, being the "largest corporate tax payer" is irrelevant to the structural criticism leveraged in the article. It is also the most valuable company in the world - I'd almost expect it would be in the top 5 US tax payers, since a large part of its operation is in the US.

That's 0.005% on profits, but they remitted all the EU VAT taxes they collected, and paid all employee income taxes.

If as you say most of their corporate activity is in the US (where they paid over $10B in corporate taxes last year), why should they be double taxed in EU countries where they mostly only retail their products, and pay the associated VAT taxes and personnel income taxes.

You can search around for the specific numbers, but global iPhone smartphone market share has been stable around 12-15% for years now.

Interesting, I am not aware of what happened re the US$13B bill (quoteed this figure in GBP in my prev response). As I indicated, this is not tax aversion but simply "clever" structuring of their EU operation. Paying employees income taxes directly is standard for most EU countries (and the US, too, mostly).

The US$13B is for a 10-year period (2004-2014), so can't be compared to their 10B tax per annum in the US.

Your numbers are correct: according to a number of reports, Apple's market share in the smartphone market range between 11% and 18%[1] and an average of about 14.4% for 2016 [0].

[0] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3609817

[1] http://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os

Humor me this: why should Apple pay any significant tax to America on a Chinese-assembled iPhone, built from Chinese parts, sold in a Chinese store to a Chinese man, via a Chinese bank, in Chinese currency? America its worldwide tax policy is absolute hubris, thinking it is entitled to a piece of another country's tax stream.

Because the value added is in the brand and the software, both of which are created in the US -- as is demonstrated both in the pricing of equal competitor hardware at a third of what iDevices sell for.

And of course Apple doesn't pay corporate income taxes on most of its profits in China either[1], so the issue would remain even if you could convince anyone that the value creation and tax obligation took place in China.

IMO Apple is the wrong example.

If you want to point out the death of innovation and competitive capitalism in the US, the real story is the slow rebuilding of the Bell Telephone and Standard Oil monopolies, and 19th century style financial trusts. 2040 will look like 1910.

You can literally trace the innovation of the internet in the context of the Bell breakup. Within my lifetime we will smash a ridiculous boat anchor on society, unleash a tsunami of innovation and improvement, and then put it back in a jar again. Very sad.

Of course it's the Guardian, so trolling for Apple haters/fanatics is the play.

In Q3 2016, following the Note 7 recall as well as losses for LG and HTC, Apple took 103.6% of the smartphone industry profits, in spite of having only 13.6% marketshare. I have no idea if monopoly is the right word, but it's kinda fucked up any way you look at it.

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/04/apple-smartphone-profit...

I can't imagine how you're looking at it. Monopoly is not the right word. Successful is the word.

How is it Apple's fault that all the other smartphone makers combined run at a loss?

103%? Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Not that poster, but yes, the information is correct, because in total, all their competitors made a loss

Insomuch as it's what the analysts who arrived at that number meant to say, yes.

I wonder if they could also claim the title of largest tax avoider.

Avoiding taxes is sound business. If a public company failed to avoid avoidable taxes, it would have a problem with its board and shareholders. Illegally evading taxes is a crime, and I'm not aware of any criminal prosecution of Apple for tax evasion.

They paid an average of ~25% tax last year.

I'd like to know more about this since the global companies I have been involved with are all sneakily hiding profits offshore, hiding them from US and UK taxes. They can't re-patriate that money, either, so innovation has slowed. This is one reason why Trump proposed a sort of tax amnesty to get that money back on shore.

Where?

In the countries where the products were sold?

Imagine you pay income tax in your residence country, making web software for global clients. If you sell your product in another country, should you have to also pay income taxes in that country or just the VAT tax for the sale?