Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by mikejb on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:00AM (#17132437)

'fraud' and 'illegal' might be problematic words here. The tax evasion schemes used by large corporations are often considered exploits of loopholes - i.e. technically legal. Countries try to offer companies a system to provide ridiculously low tax rates for larger regions, because if they get 1% of the revenue of the entire region it's more beneficial to them than getting 20% of their local revenue (numbers are fictional here). That's partly also a reason why e.g. Ireland is fighting on Apple's side on the $13bn ruling, despite them loosing out on $13bn. They'd loose the ability to guarantee companies a low tax rate, which is worth far more.

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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rmc on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:50AM (#17132701)

Ireland also benefits from lots of highly paid, highly skilled employees, which it can tax, and also people are happy because there are jobs and oppertunities in Ireland. Many of the big name US tech companies in Ireland employee thousands of people each.

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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by askmike on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:05AM (#17132471)

> 'fraud' and 'illegal' might be problematic words here. The tax evasion schemes used by large corporations are often considered exploits of loopholes - i.e. technically legal.

In your example on Apple this is not clear at all: there are two legal systems at play (the Irish one and the EU one). Apple is only playing by the rules of the Irish one. The problem comes from the EU saying that the Irish laws are not within the EU framework and thus not allowed.

Apple is very much doing not legal things from a perspective of EU law, hence the fine.

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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rusk on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:14AM (#17132511)

Wrong. Ireland's competition rules are harmonised with EU rules. Not by dictat either, it's a condition of signing the various European treaties that you will implement particular laws that conform to certain principles. In this particular case Ireland had broken her own laws on competition. Like with so much of the skullduggery that goes on in Ireland, it took an outside agency to blow the whistle.

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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rusk on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:25AM (#17132579)

it's a condition of signing the various European treaties

These treaties by the way, are passed with popular consent. As a constitutional democracy Ireland requires a Referendum for any constitutional change, which is always necessary when signing up to anything that says we'll conform to some outside agency.

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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by mikejb on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:19AM (#17132543)

I agree that it is not very clear - which is why I wrote "are often considered" etc. Also the Apple example was brought up to explain a nations' interest in low tax rates, not about whether they're legal or not.

Parent was the one making definitive claims about fraud and illegal actions.

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