Apple, no I’m not talking about the fruit but you probably knew that anyone, is probably one of the most well known electronic and technology companies year to date co-founded by Steve Jobs. According to Tech Crunch, this is the latest regarding Apple. “Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules,” Vestager wrote. “The Commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years. In fact, this selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 per cent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 per cent in 2014. “
Apple was sneaky enough to optimize their tax structure by creating a company that isn’t even real. Meaning it’s only real on paper. Is that not fraud? When something becomes documented it seems real. So this income remained untaxed for one year, significantly lowering the valuable tax rate. Apple has inevitably benefited from a very high amount. To be exact; $14.5 billion from tax benefits. This is astronomical. Of course this can’t go unpunished. So Apple is without a doubt getting sewed.
Honestly, I don’t see this as a huge concern for the company only, because Apple does well for itself. During it’s last earnings report, the company apparently $231.5 billion on hand. Clearly Apple attains a ton of money all over the world including the U.S. Should the government stop and consider that maybe other companies have pulled schemes like this. It doesn’t hurt to investigate.
Clearly Apple and Ireland have been working together for some time. Ireland has given illegal preferential tax treatment to Apple. Illegal being the operative word.
Clearly this hasn’t been the first scandal of all time. According to Fortune, there were top five scandals in 2015 regarding corporations. The Volkswagen emissions scandal, FIFA corruption scandal, Toshiba accounting, scandal, Valeant’s Secret Division, and Turing Pharmaceuticals and Martin Shkreli. For more further details on these scandals you can visit the fortune website.
The main concern with Ireland And Europe now is that every company in Ireland and across Europe will now unfortunately be at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed. This is unfair but has to be done. No act that is illegal can go unpunished.
Consequently after this predicament, Apple shares have gone down in New York, which is no surprise. Illegal acts don’t look good on anybody or any company. Apple will surely face the consequences even though it doesn’t seem like they are really worried.
