Apple Announces 1,000 New Jobs In Ireland As EU Tax Ruling Nears

What do you do when your company has been accused of sheltering billions of dollars in profits in Ireland in exchange for maintaining jobs? Add more jobs.

The European Union last year accused Ireland of swerving international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from revenue collectors in return for maintaining jobs. A decision on whether the tax deal with Apple constituted unfair state aid is due after Christmas, Finance Minister Michael Noonan told journalists on Wednesday.

Nothing like a payoff.

Good for them. The US could have those jobs if they'd bring their corporate tax rate in line with common sense. Money flows to the path of least resistance. I hope politicians and the general public learn this basic fact of life one day.

This way when the fed asks why Apple has 0 profits in the US but 10 billion in profits in Ireland they can point to their workers doing better.

HockeyJon said:

Good for them. The US could have those jobs if they'd bring their corporate tax rate in line with common sense. Money flows to the path of least resistance. I hope politicians and the general public learn this basic fact of life one day.

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Ireland has 0%, or near enough. Please let me know how we can beat 0%, I'm all ears. Perhaps we should pay them money for the right to exploit our labor?

While the rate is 12.5%, the effective rate is still lower than that. Some, like Boston Scientific, pay less than 1%.

lol

TwistedAegis said:

Ireland has 0%, or near enough. Please let me know how we can beat 0%, I'm all ears. Perhaps we should pay them money for the right to exploit our labor?

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Whatever. Nobody is forcing them to work for Apple. Exploit what exactly? Good paying jobs is a bad thing?

fdiaz78 said:

Whatever. Nobody is forcing them to work for Apple. Exploit what exactly? Good paying jobs is a bad thing?

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No, you misunderstand, the people saying lower corporate tax rates or they'll go elsewhere. If Ireland raises their taxes, they'll simply go to the Bahamas where tax rates are actually 0% - and then how do you get lower than 0%? At some point, some sense of actual society and duty needs to come into play here, rather than a race to the bottom.

TwistedAegis said:

Ireland has 0%, or near enough. Please let me know how we can beat 0%, I'm all ears. Perhaps we should pay them money for the right to exploit our labor?

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Ok, so keep the corporate tax rates where they are and continue complaining about job losses. To your latter point, a lot of governments do just that. It's called corporate welfare, and I disagree with that as well. And if your complaint is that they're simply exploiting labourers, than I'm not sure why you're upset that they're not opening up in your backyard. Why would you want to work for a corporation that's simply out to exploit you?

TwistedAegis said:

No, you misunderstand, the people saying lower corporate tax rates or they'll go elsewhere. If Ireland raises their taxes, they'll simply go to the Bahamas where tax rates are actually 0% - and then how do you get lower than 0%? At some point, some sense of actual society and duty needs to come into play here, rather than a race to the bottom.

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There's more to the picture than simply tax rates. The Bahamas might not have the knowledge base in their citizenry (and neither will we if people continue to choose the arts over STEM majors), and they definitely don't have the manufacturing infrastructure that can reduce costs in other ways depending on what you want from your operation. But yes, when the US has the third highest corporate tax rate in the world, and companies that are "based in the US" are actually headquartered in a room in someone's house in a lower-taxed jurisdiction, than maybe it's time your government actually does something about the rate instead of just crying "hey, you're not patriotic for leaving". Decisive action gets things done, complaining does not. The US corporate tax rate is over 30%. Most other industrialized nations with similar technical capacities are less than half that of the US.

Just about every big corporate company is pulling some kinda scheme to get out of paying as much taxes as possible.

They have a fiduciary responsibility to do so.

Taxes are parasitic.

Hey, there is a lot going on with Ireland these day. I was talking with PayPal's Fraud people the other day and this Irish chick had this really sexy voice with the accent and all. Damn, I think it's a win win for the outsourcing move from India to Ireland.