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Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

Disappointed in Apple and Tim Cook, this is the typical amoral behavior one can by now expect from corporations and their CEOs.

It's always about the money.

What can we as EU citizens do to encourage these corps to behave? I'm thinking an e-mail to Tim Cook wouldn't have much effect.

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Advocate for unification of tax laws across EU - then corporations lose incentive to register in countries which offer them the largest tax discounts.

Tax unification - would in fact start with Fiscal Harmonisation.. That is to say - tax rates can be different, but the underlying calculations how to calculate income and expenses would be harmonised across the Member States of EU.

We are generations away from Tax Unification, if it ever happens...

Fiscal Harmonisation - more like it, though save some global seismic event - still a generation into the future.

Fiscal Harmonisation -> would be a good starting point.

I believe this is the political calculation the EU is making. Further EU integration is unpopular right now, but not as unpopular as large corporate tax dodgers.

This is partly about showing how only a big powerful EU can stand up to companies like Apple, whereas small countries like Ireland have to beg for tax.

The Eurozone crisis and the treatment of Greece tells me that we're a very long way away from that happening.

> then corporations lose incentive to register in countries which offer them the largest tax discounts.

then corporations lose incentive to register in Europe. You can't have unilateral tax rules when countries have different growth and capital requirments.

I'm clearly in minority here on HN, but living in EU and hearing about their legislation, I'm pretty sure that Apple with their overpriced products and cheap factories in China can still make more positive impact in the world with that money than any EU gov or European Union.

Of course these ponderings should be irrelevant. If law would be simpler without unnecessary millions of complications (and new ones added every day), then it's just boolean. They broke the law by not paying necessary taxes or they didn't. Not much to discuss.

The EU has had a massive positive effect on former soviet countries. It was and is very successful in preventing conflicts and war within Europe.

Smartphones and computers simply can't compete with that.

The EU has had a massive positive effect on former soviet countries.

I live in a former Soviet Union country and I can confirm that. Since we've joined EU in 2004 things have improved really massively in pretty much every aspect. Sure, we are still way behind the old western countries, but comparing to other former Soviet Union states that did not join EU, the contrast is staggering.

> It was and is very successful in preventing conflicts and war within Europe.

Interesting but completely baseless new myth.

> Interesting but completely baseless new myth.

Preventing war has been an explicit aim of European integration going back to the beginning. From the Schuman declaration (1950, founding document of the ECSC): "The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible"[0]. This principle has been widely accepted in Europe for the last 65 years.

You may of course disagree that economic integration is the main reason for the lack of intraeuropean wars since then (especially compared to the previous few millennia), but dismissing it as a "myth" is at very least least a surprising claim that requires some actual argument to back it up, and "new" is just factually incorrect.

[0] http://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/declaration-of-9-may-1950

A "new myth"? It's why the EU received the 2012 Nobel peace prize: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/

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