EU orders Ireland to collect €13bn tax from Apple

The EU Commission have ruled that Apple's tax arrangements in Ireland amount to illegal state aid and have ordered the Irish government to collect €13bn in retrospective taxes.

Apple employs 5,500 people in Ireland with a further 38,000 iOS developers registered in the country. They have invested €140m over the last 4 years into their campus in Cork with plans to create another 1,000 jobs. Their Irish operation is used to channel European sales to their head office, taking advantage of a corporation tax regime that allows them to pay very little tax.

The EU Commission has decided that the tax laws that Apple takes advantage of are unfair to other companies who don't have structure or turnover that would let them take advantage of them and has decided that Apple should pay €13bn in back tax. The EU's unelected Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestanger, says that the €13bn is unpaid taxes not a fine but it is a tiny amount of Apple's profit that she has ruled is illegal which undermines that statement.

As EU Competition Commissioner, Vestanger has mainly been focusing her attention on foreign-owned companies but she does list amongst her achievements bankrupting Cyprus Airways when she ruled that a rescue loan and capital injection given to the company by the Cypriot government which owned a majority stake int he company was illegal state aid.

The ruling against Apple - which follows similar rulings against Starbucks and Google - risks jobs and investment that Ireland desperately needs. Unsurprisingly, both Apple and the Irish government are appealing the decision through the EU courts but it is unlikely that the EU courts will rule that the EU has infringed on Irish sovereignty by undermining tax laws dating back to before Ireland even joined the EEA.

EU pushing for tax power grab off the back of Panama Papers

The EU are trying to use the Panama Papers scandal to grab more powers over taxation.

Despite there being very few reports of criminal activity, they are focussing entirely on tax evasion as an excuse to call for more centralised control over taxation, a pan-EU blacklist of countries that won't share information with the EU and penalties for anyone putting their money offshore.

Under new regulations, large companies will have to publish information about the amount of profit they make in each EU country, how much money they make before tax and how much tax they pay. The proposed new regulations have been criticised by some of the businesses affected and industry analysts who point out that this is commercially sensitive information.

New EU disability tax

A new tax on disability is being introduced courtesy of the European Empire.

The EU Commission has ruled that mobility scooters are leisure vehicles and should be subject to the same 10% import duty as a racing car or camper van.

The average mobility scooter costs about £2,500 which means this new tax will add about £250 to the cost of a mobility scooter.

But why would the European Empire want to impose a tax on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society?

The tax, which follows a 2005 ruling by the World Customs Organisation, will raise £6million for the Government, estimates the Elizabeth Finn Care charity.

Ah yes, follow the money.  The European Empire takes 75% of import duty collected by member states and calls it "traditional own resources".  And of course import duties are one of the European Empire's most effective protectionist tools, keeping bloated and inefficient industries in the black at the expense of the consumer by adding punitive import duties to goods imported from outside the empire.

The European Empire decided last month to extend import duty on shoes imported from Asia, adding between 10% and 16.5% to the cost of importing shoes from China and Vietnam - a cost passed on to the consumer.  Tariff's on shoes were introduced to protect Italian shoe makers who were struggling to sell their expensive shoes in competition with cheap imports from countries that aren't subjected to the expensive bureaucracy of the European Empire.

Energy saving light bulbs, which the European Empire has made compulsory, are subject to punitive import duties to protect the German manufacturer, Osram, which was slow to move from manufacturing incandescent bulbs and found itself unable to compete with Chinese bulb manufacturers who were already producing energy saving bulbs on a massive scale and free from the expensive bureaucracy of the European Empire.

Most mobility scooters are made outside of the European Empire, these import duties are just a protectionist scam to protect inefficient, uncompetitive European companies at the expense of disabled people who have no choice but to pay.

Hector the EU tax inspector?

The European Empire wants details of our bank accounts, wages and taxes to be shared with other member states to tackle VAT fraud.

The proposals that are being put forward by the Imperial Tax Commissioner would allow any member state to be able to access bank account details (including individual transactions) and tax and salary details for any "EU citizen", supposedly for the purposes of combating VAT fraud.

VAT fraud is of particular interest to the European Empire because VAT receipts are one of the measures used to calculate how much our annual contribution to the imperial budget should be. This is why there is a lower limit of 15% on VAT and why the European Empire has severely restricted the number of items that can be rated at zero VAT.

UKIP MEP, Godfrey Bloom, said:

The idea that the Government is prepared to hand over personal data to Brussels is chilling. Time and time again the state seems to think the answer to every problem is a new database. Then they lose or give away our data.

It's a well known fact that most large scale fraud and theft of this type of data is committed from within the organisation in question. You can protect against outside threats with firewalls and physical security and password protection but they're all useless when someone who has legitimate access to that data decides to steal or mis-use it. Giving millions* of people across the EU access to UK tax and bank account details will increase that risk an inconceivable amount - not only will more people have access to the data but leaks will also be harder to find making stealing it lower risk.

* The combined workforce of every government agency involved with tax in every member state runs into the millions. HM Revenue & Customs employs about 100,000 people alone.