The confrontation between the European Commission (EC) and technology companies US just had an exponential leap <- - content>: Apple must give Ireland more than US $ 14,000 million in taxes, as result of its business operations between 2003 and 2014.
the issue is longstanding and has to do with tax preferences that Ireland has installed to attract companies in the technology sector in his country, like Apple or Facebook , which has its headquarters for Europe in this country. The social network also plans to build one of its massive data centers here and in Dublin, Ireland’s capital, is also one of the centers of software development Amazon, one of five which is outside the United States. (Read “Europe goes to attack”)
Under Irish law, multinational companies like Apple can move much of their profits to a company registered in Ireland, but with royal seat in a tax haven, what they It allows a considerable portion of lower taxes. The agreement has been so controversial that the Irish government said, a couple of years, that 2018 would end with this tax policy does.
This move allowed Apple cut a lot of taxes by reporting sales in the European common market in Ireland, rather than the countries where they occurred. For example, according to the Commission, Apple paid a rate of 1% tax in 2003 for its European operations. The percentage dropped to 0.005% for 2014.
“This practice is illegal under EU rules on state aid because it allowed Apple to pay a lot less tax than other companies,” he said the Commission said in a statement. The sanction against Apple is the largest of its kind in Europe by far. The previous benchmark was the automotive Nurburgring in Germany, he had to pay 1,290 million euros to receive public aid that was incompatible with European competition rules. The sanction against Apple was 13,000 million euros.
Both Apple and the Irish government said they will appeal the sanction. Michael Noonan, Ireland’s finance minister, manisfestó is “strongly disagrees with the decision. The Ministry will seek cabinet endorsement to appeal the decision of the Commission to the European justice. ” While Apple, through a statement, said that “we will appeal and are confident that the decision will be overturned.” Tim Cook, CEO of the company, went a little further and said that “we have never asked for nor received special treatment. We are now in the unusual position of having to pay taxes, retroactively, to a government that says that they are not we, as we have already paid “.
Much of the mess with international tax companies as Apple has to do with the taxation policies of the United States: if a company enters the country their foreign profits must pay taxes again. In the case of Apple, the tax rate would be about 40% of the money coming in.
Cook has said that, unless this model is renegotiated, the company will continue without nationalizing their profits. “We will not it bring back that money until there is a fair rate,” he said in a recent and rare interview with The Washington Post. “I think it is convenient to the interests of the country, there is a reform of corporate tax in the United States, regardless of which political camp is in charge of the White House.”
In this interview Cook explained that “I’ve always felt that should happen is that every dollar tax will be applied immediately, without postponing it. But one consequence of this is that one would have free movement of capital. “
Now, Apple is not the only company targeted by the European authorities for their tax affairs on the continent. Amazon has also been heavily criticized for having received preferential treatment in Luxembourg for that would install his center logistics control for the continent, supposedly.
Here the plot thickens a bit, as Jean-Claude Juncker, former prime minister of this country, was commissioned to negotiate with Amazon at the time. Juncker is the current President of the European Commission, the body performing this type of research.
The trouble companies American technology in Europe do not stop there and extend to land beyond taxes. For example, Google is being investigated for alleged unfair competition in the form presents its search results, as well as partnerships holding the handset makers that use Android, its mobile operating system.
Simply put this issue (which basically is anything but simple and is fraught with technical subtleties that can tip the balance one way or the other) has to do with the way Google displays its other tools in the search results, particularly it has to do with their shopping services, Google shopping: the company, in the view of the commission, shows most prominently its own bid above its competitors, in this case, for example, could be Amazon. “This way, (Google) can artificially divert traffic from other online shopping services and thus hinder their ability to compete in the market,” said branch EC governing these issues, led by the curator Margrete Vestager.
Facebook has also been investigated by the way it handles private information of its users. And in October last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union scuppered an agreement allowing the transfer of data between Europe and the United States. Before the ruling, the agreement should be renegotiated and already implemented a new version, which established certain privacy safeguards for European data.
No comments:
Post a Comment