Ireland made some kind of special arrangements. For example Apple paid the full tax for products sold in Ireland but only aprox 1% or even less for the products sold in the rest of EU. It's like saying "come to Ireland" and pay no tax to the rest of EU. Ireland is happy because they cash in the tax for the products sold in Ireland plus an extra for the products sold in the rest of EU. If you ask me tax should be paid where the profit is generated.

Ireland has sovereignty over its tax law to a certain extent. For VAT for example there is an EU minimum standard rate of 15% (with an option for a reduced rate).

One of the biggest loopholes is _finally_ expiring in 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement .

Something else Ireland is limited in is custom tax deals/rulings with individual companies. As an EU member state, one can not just decide to apply an individual tax base or tax rate reduction without basing this in reality, hence https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/technology/apple-tax-eu-i... .

Ireland is basically selling multinational corporations the right to avoid paying their taxes to other European countries in which they have significant activity.

What I want to understand is what happens in the opposite direction, i.e. what does the tax situation look like for e.g Volkswagen cars sold in the US? Do they pay a minimal amount of tax in the US with most of the profits repatriated to Germany? If so it's just a whiney tax grab by the French and Germans who are used to getting their own way in the EU.

> If so it's just a whiney tax grab by the French and Germans who are used to getting their own way in the EU.

What? EU countries are not saying that repatriating profits is bad, what they say is that companies use strategies to avoid to pay taxes.

If USA government think Volkswagen pay so little taxes for revenue done in USA they are the ones that have the saying

Well I don't see any issue repatriating taxed profits. After all they go to a different market to make a profit, right? The issue is when they don't pay their fair share of tax by using various tax evasion schemes more or less "legal".

The reason why they don't pay their fare share of tax is down to US repatriation laws, nothing to do with Ireland: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-biggest-tax-sc...

The reason they pay so little tax in the EU is that in line with international law they pay it in the country where most of the innovation that drives those profits occurs, i.e. the US. Or at least they would if the US wasn't basically using its weak repatriation laws as a way of giving its companies a competitive edge against the EU. The moves by France et al can be viewed as a way to address this, but I imagine it would require major changes to international accounting rules and I would be surprised if there wasn't retaliation from the US. I guess my point is you can't really blame Ireland for not doing this unilaterally. Furthermore why should Ireland increase its corporation tax rate when it is explicitly outside the competence of the EU?

>> they pay it in the country where most of the innovation that drives those profits occurs, i.e. the US.

I believe that's quite unfair and wrong and pretty much BS. You ignore the fact that by allowing a "monster" company like Apple to sell in your country you undermine any potential local manufacturer. See the internet industry in China. Would there be Baidu, Alibaba, Weibo etc leaders in the industry without protectionist policies?I highly doubt it! You would see Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. You ignore the fact the the profit made in EU helps Apple to innovate in the US. Without investment/money there is little innovation.

Paying taxes in US for products sold in EU is like Ikea planting trees in Germany to make up for the ones chopped off in Canada. The point is to give back where you make profit, at the point of sale otherwise you end-up with wastelands. You can do that by paying taxes(so that the local gov. can invest on your behalf) or by investing in the local community(i.e. jobs/R&D).

Which is what the point of the article is about. What if the EU was more harmonized, especially at a fiscal level?