> However on the other hand Ireland enticed many big companies to their country on the promise of lower tax. You can't blame Apple for taking advantage of such an offer. They followed the letter of the [Irish] law as far as I can tell (unless someone can correct me?).
There's two separate issues. One, Ireland is cutting taxes far below the EU average to attract all companies they can. That's a dick move, but welcome to politics, it's fully legal. Two, Apple has received further tax breaks on top of that, reducing their tax rate from a crippling, communist 1% to an effective 0.005%. The European Commission found only the second deal to be illegal, and Apple just has to repay the tax difference to the regular Irish levels.
Ireland is still a tax haven, just slightly less unfairly advantageously to Apple.
> Ireland is cutting taxes far below the EU average to attract all companies they can. That's a dick move
Allowing people and their companies to keep more of their money while creating tons of jobs in a high unemployment country. What a dick move indeed. /s
I'd also argue there's very little "Creating" OR "Shifting" going on from Apple in this tax haven.
They can keep the vast "majority" of the (read: "well paid") jobs in Cupertino with Stanford, UCBerkeley, CalTech, etc grads. All the while reaping the tax haven benefits abroad.[0]
Their center in Cork, Ireland is a distribution base, which is different than the product design, R&D, and development that goes on in America. Compared to the amount, in billions, of taxes avoided, the "Tons of jobs" grandparent is claiming doesn't seem to be true.
There's two separate issues. One, Ireland is cutting taxes far below the EU average to attract all companies they can. That's a dick move, but welcome to politics, it's fully legal. Two, Apple has received further tax breaks on top of that, reducing their tax rate from a crippling, communist 1% to an effective 0.005%. The European Commission found only the second deal to be illegal, and Apple just has to repay the tax difference to the regular Irish levels.
Ireland is still a tax haven, just slightly less unfairly advantageously to Apple.