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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

What are you arguing exactly? This isn't punishment or fine, this is paying what they should have all along.

The target of the case is wrong, it should be Ireland, not Apple. Many companies have unique (to them) tax benefits across the entire EU, some hidden under things like “electricity subsidies”. If the company pay what the country mandates, then the rest should be between the country and the EU, not the EU and the company.

The target for this case is Ireland. They lost the case and now need to fix what they charged wrongly. Again, what are you arguing about?

The argument is that because Ireland needs to recover money from Apple, Apple is going to have to pay that money, hence Apple is getting punished.

They are not getting punished, as far as I know no fine whatsoever is required against them.

Paying your taxes, even if late, is not a punishment.

They are setting up an example for other companies doing same. Fuck with EU taxes, we will fuck you up (and lets be honest here, 13 billions absolutely nothing for Apple given 500+ million wealthy market they cater to).

Law often does that to perpetrators. Ireland tried to save the shady deal by refusing the money it should have received (corruption in plain sight, with these sums its not unexpected it goes to highest places plus something about saving nation's public face), so this is how they got about it.

Not sure its 100% best process but overall a very good move and precedent for future.

€13,000,000,000 is not “absolutely nothing”. It’s almost twice the entire EU defence fund budget.

And just to be clear.. this is really an example of how badly Apple were actively robbing society through their tax avoidance bullshit.

> It’s almost twice the entire EU defence fund budget.

The EU defence spend in 2022 was €240 billion.

That’s very interesting but not what I said.

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-indus...

True, but IMO it's a bit misleading because you were using as a point of comparison something that sounded like the military budget of Europe without specifying that it's something completely different (that people probably never heard of — at least I didn't and neither did my grandparent). I'm not saying it's intentional or anything, just wanted to point it out.

If you're referring to a single pot of money that exists to support Research and Development, you would typically refer to that as "The European Defence Fund" as "entire EU defence fund budget" would be interpreted differently.

That is the amount spent by EU member states on defence; not what the EU itself spent.

"13 billions absolutely nothing for Apple"

LOL no there is not a single company or person in the world for whom 13 BILLION dollars is 'absolutely nothing'.

> LOL no there is not a single company or person in the world for whom 13 BILLION dollars is 'absolutely nothing'.

Apple's revenue last year alone was $383 Billion.

Isn't that more than the EU defence budget from 2022? Not gonna lie, I'm kinda a little scared now. I realise that there's less than a 1 in 1 billion chance Apple is gonna set up its own military and attack the EU, but still...

The EU doesn't have "defence budget", the EU isn't a sovereign country, the EU doesn't have any armed forces.

What EU does have is the European Defence Agency (EDA) which is a body that organises collective projects and coordination on behalf of its members.

The EDA's budget in 2023 was €44.8Bn.

Combined defense budgets of all individual member states was 214 billion in 2023. That's 'spending budget', not revenue like the 300 something billion of Apple's revenue cited above.

This means 3.39% of their worldwide revenue, and an even bigger share of their profits. It's not negligible at all, even though it's just collecting taxes late without a penalty.

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