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Comment by hurril | Hacker News Reader

It's weirder that they are not able to decide for themselves what goes on in Ireland.

It's not weird, Ireland is part of the single market, that allows Apple to operate in the single market area from Ireland but the counter part is that there are a set of rules to avoid a race to the bottom in term of taxation. That's what this is about.

> there are a set of rules to avoid a race to the bottom in term of taxation

No there aren't, or at least there weren't prior to the 15% that was recently agreed. Taxation generally is not an EU competence.

> Taxation generally is not an EU competence.

With the sole exception of VAT and customs duties.

Corporation tax is a matter of internal revenue and none of EUs business at all. Well, now it apparently is.

But fining Apple and Google is!

How much taxes will be paid in the EU when the giants leave? Ireland is making a judgement here, one where they understand that they have more to gain this way. That is: unless you are trying to make the claim that they have been bribed by Apple.

I don't think many megacorps are going to willingly abandon a fifth of the world's GDP and an even larger portion of the world's disposable income. They aren't going to leave that much money on the table.

Of course not. They would move countries to the currently best option.

Taxing multinational companies is a prisoner's dilemma, and taxation agreements between countries are a rational strategy to get a better outcome for all.

> taxation agreements between countries are a rational strategy to get a better outcome for all

That may be the theory, but the reality is that they are bully pulpits whereby the largest nations (in this case Germany and France) force the others into having to act against their own interest.

What may be beneficial for Ireland, is certainly not beneficial for the other nations in the EU. I don't see why it's bulllying, when Germany or France try to enforce the treaties they have with Ireland (as an EU member).

How is it weird for a country to be bound by the treaties it entered into?

Depends on the example. The US treaties with indigenous peoples don't really seem to be bound to anything other than the ink on paper. So, what's your point?

Not any weirder than Montana having to abide by SCOTUS decisions.

Montana is not a sovereign state. Ireland is.

First of all, Montana enjoys 10th Amendment dual-sovereignty, just like every other US state.

But second, you seem to be asserting that the other involved sovereigns have no right to hold Ireland to the commitments it agreed to when it signed treaties. How is that supposed to work? Are treaties now just lies of convenience?

> the other involved sovereigns

The European Union isn’t sovereign. It likes to pretend it is, but it isn’t.

> Are treaties now just lies of convenience?

They’ve just about always been just lies of convenience. Think Molotv-Ribbentrop pact. Or the START treaty. Or the Iranian nuclear deal. Or the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which is dead as of yesterday, because NATO suspended it too.

> The European Union isn’t sovereign. It likes to pretend it is, but it isn’t.

I'm going to assume you're misinterpreting rather than trying to be disingenuous, but I was obviously referencing the nations Ireland signed the series of treaties starting with the Treaty of Lisbon (which Ireland signed in 2009).

France, Germany, etc. are perfectly within their rights to hold Ireland to the agreements it made.

> They’ve just about always been just lies of convenience.

Your examples are proving the opposite of what you appear to think they do. The US would be a much better example of what you mean, but that just demonstrates that nobody currently wants to take the US on.

In any case, Ireland is perfectly free to exit the treaty normally if it chooses. England showed them how.

It's a sovereign state in a common market union, so it has to follow the common market rules.

Sovereignty isn't binary, at least in practice. Think about tribal governments in US. Are they truly sovereign?

No, they haven’t and they aren’t.

That’s the kind of thing Britain thought they were being smart about with Brexit and look where that’s gotten them

Performing better than the other two major European economies, France and Germany?

Britain doesn’t seem to be an outlier considering a backdrop of an ailing European economy suffering the after effects of the energy crisis - though clearly it could be doing far better in the global context.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-economy-grows-02-q2-2023...

How would you go about implementing a common market without a court to handle disputes?

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