Apple’s Cork campus celebrates 40 years of community and looks to the future | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s Cork campus celebrates 40 years of community and looks to the future

apple.com

22 pointsfeross8 comments

This reminds me of a fun Irish news report that's on YouTube, from 1980, shortly after they established the factory, including an interview with Steve Jobs in Ireland: https://youtu.be/61scMzhVEF8

I always found it strange that Apple so early in it’s history setup a factory in a provincial town in a small country on the edge of Europe. I would love to the know the backstory how Ireland attracted American tech companies in the 80s. Henry Ford setup a factory in Cork because his father came from the county.

It reminds me of Delorean (Back to the Future car) setting up a factory in Northern Ireland because the British government gave them a lot of money to do so. Though that didn’t last as long.

EDIT: Looks like they got a 10 year tax holiday (zero tax). They were the last to take advantage of it because the EU wanted it stopped. After 10 years they found a way to work around EU rules otherwise they would have moved to Singapore.

eg Double Irish

This is cool. Cork is a wonderful city, as are the people.

And in how many of those years did the taxes Apple avoid by being in Ireland exceed the profits generated by this "campus"?

This is a delay of taxes, but does not avoid them in the long term. To be brought back and used in America, taxes will have to be paid on the money. It defers the tax hit, but does not remove it. If Apple wants to use that money for R&D, investing in new production, expansion, or similar, those are expenses and not covered by corporate tax. If Apple wants to do buybacks or dividends, it will be subject when it's repatriated to do so.

That assumes there isn’t going to be a repatriation tax holiday at some point.

It's not just about American taxes. Ireland is the scab of the rich E.U countries.

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