Apple Inc might owe US$8 billion in back taxes from its use of potentially illegal tax shelters in Ireland.
The European Commission’s (EC) recent ruling against tax breaks for multinational corporations means that the tech behemoth could be subject to a hefty bill.
The commission has been cracking down on US companies trying to negotiate sweetheart deals with individual EU member nations. Starbucks Corp’s operations in the Netherlands and Amazon.com Inc and McDonald’s Corp in Luxembourg have also been subject to investigations.
The EC found that Starbucks owed Dutch authorities upwards of US$22 million and a ruling from Belgium this week determined that 35 companies across the EU owe the equivalent of US$760 million in back taxes.
Apple has already said it would appeal a ruling against the company; chief executive officer Tim Cook called the investigation “political crap” in a recent 60 Minutes interview.
Apple probably would not be the direct recipient of a fine in any case, some have argued, since the subject of the investigation is the government of Ireland, but given the state of the Irish economy, especially its national debt, the government would presumably try to recover money from Apple.
This is not the first time Apple has been investigated for its accounting practices in Ireland. Executives, including Cook, appeared before the US Senate in 2013 to testify about whether it had renegotiated Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate down to 2 percent. The company denied any wrongdoing.
The EC extended the Apple investigation last month, making it less likely that a judgement from the regulator could come in time to affect the Irish election.
“The Belgian ‘excess profit’ tax scheme, applicable since 2005, allowed certain multinational group companies to pay substantially less tax in Belgium on the basis of tax rulings,” the regulator said in an unbylined media release about the similar Belgian plan it ruled on this week.
“The scheme reduced the corporate tax base of the companies by between 50 percent and 90 percent to discount for so-called ‘excess profits’ that allegedly result from being part of a multinational group,” it said.
“The Commission’s in-depth investigation opened in February last year showed that the scheme derogated from normal practice under Belgian company tax rules and the so-called ‘arm’s length principle.’ This is illegal under EU state aid rules,” it said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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