Apple Inc. Ordered to Pay $14+ Billion in Taxes It Owes the Irish Government

The European Union has ordered Apple Incorporated to pay over $14.5 billion in taxes it has been ducking illegally in Ireland. If Apple is forced to pay this amount, it will reduce Apple’s profits. That may drive Apple’s share prices and dividends downward, which will disappoint investors, such as hedge funds, Wall Street Investment banks, individual millionaire and billionaire investors, etc….

The New York Times reports,

“Europe’s competition enforcer said that Apple’s illegal deals with the Irish government allowed the technology giant to pay virtually nothing on its European business in some years. The arrangements enabled Apple to funnel profit from two Irish subsidiaries to a “head office” with “no employees, no premises, no real activities,” the commission said.

By doing so, Apple paid only 50 euros in taxes for every million euros in profit during 2014. As part of its ruling, Europe demanded that Ireland recoup 10 years’ worth of back taxes, some 13 billion euros, or about $14.5 billion, plus interest.”

Apple is sitting on a pile of cash, $230+ billion, so the $14.5 billion it has avoided in taxes is a drop in the bucket.

“’U.S. companies are the grandmasters of tax avoidance,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, professor at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California and a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.'”

Naturally, the US corporate propaganda machine, such as the National Review, has viciously attacked the EU ruling. Apparently, the editors think only the little guys should pay taxes, and that US corporations should get a free ride in using the variety of infrastructure of Ireland and the rest of Europe that the 99 percent of Ireland pays for. Ireland’s government plans to appeal the EU’s ruling because it is claimed Apple owes much more in taxes.

In other words, the National Review supports redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, and that rich should not pay any taxes.

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‘Dishonest, deceitful and corrupt:’ Ireland jails three top bankers over 2008 financial meltdown

Three senior Irish bankers were jailed last Friday for up to three-and-a-half years each. They were convicted of conspiring to defraud investors in the most prominent prosecution arising from the 2008 banking crisis that crippled the country’s economy.

The trio will be among the first senior bankers globally to be jailed for their role in the collapse of a bank during the crisis.

The lack of convictions until now has angered Irish taxpayers, who had to stump up 64 billion euros – almost 40 per cent of annual economic output – after a property collapse forced the biggest state bank rescue in the eurozone.

The crash thrust Ireland into a three-year sovereign bailout in 2010 and the finance ministry said last month that it could take another 15 years to recover the funds pumped into the banks still operating.

Former Irish Life and Permanent Chief Executive Denis Casey was sentenced to two years and nine months following the 74-day criminal trial, Ireland’s longest ever.

Willie McAteer, former finance director at the failed Anglo Irish Bank, and John Bowe, its ex-head of capital markets, were given sentences of 42 months and 24 months respectively.

All three were convicted of conspiring together and with others to mislead investors, depositors and lenders by setting up a 7.2-billion-euro circular transaction scheme between March and September 2008 to bolster Anglo’s balance sheet.

Unfortunately, the United States government is rife with corruption, and while US bankers committed fraud and other crimes, such as money laundering in the tens of billions for the Mexican drug cartels, not a single Wall Street banker-criminal has even been charged with a crime, although the banks have had to pay fines in the billions.

That’s because Wall Street bankers and other major corporate players own the US government, and both major political parties. This goes to show how political corruption in the US trumps justice.

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Market jitters all round as eurozone woes return

Markets rattled as the Eurozone faced the renewed Euro crisis. In Ireland, the people have decided not to pay a property tax earmarked to save the banks and rich investors from their own stupidity and bad investments in mortgage backed bonds.

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