Ireland is Apple's European Headquarters (also in Cork). Yet Apple cares so little about Ireland that they don't even bother to make a real apple store available.
The only thing they care about Ireland for is tax avoidance.
The only thing they care about Ireland for is tax avoidance.
Apple cared so much about Ireland that they had several licenses grandfathered in for the likes of CompuB, eLara and Mactivate as Apple Resellers. There's also Select Ireland chain which act as the premium reseller equivalent @ https://ie.selectonline.com/
There's also an Apple store in Belfast fwiw.
Saying that, the new Apple store in Belfast is nice, much bigger than its previous spot in Victoria Square
As for taxes that's on the EU and member countries for having such a complexity that only massive corporates can benefit, rather than simplifying and making it worthwhile to operate for businesses of all sizes.
But the tax dodging should be eliminated completely, not expanded to smaller businesses :)
Their tax minimisation structure involved one Apple company paying royalties to another Apple company for access to IP. How on earth would the retail business, another separate entity, have any impact?
Tax incentives should be awarded to smaller businesses though while mega-corps should pay more. We can't be surprised that we don't have any great SW giants in Europe when Ireland awards these generous tax breaks to US giants but small EU companies get the full shaft.
We have progressiver taxation for income, why doesn't that apply to corporations as well? I mean we do, but it functions the exact opposite of how it should, favoring the giants and strangling the start-ups.
And I'm not even a socialist, but the current system is ridiculous.
Isn't Apple a massive corporation? I don't think I understand your argument here.
The reasons to hire in a locality are almost entirely detached from the reasons to sell a product there.
And we can complain about tax avoidance we want, Ireland is getting exactly what they wanted out of their tax policy.