This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Jesus Fucking Christ, this fucking company can pay 13 billion and it still will not do a dent on their TRILLION dollars value. Imagine all that society could benefit if those fucking assholes just paid their share, instead of us having to hear how green and socially conscious these bastards are.
Tech companies are the most disgusting corporations in their sheer greed, right up there with oil corps.
They greedy af. They've lobbied (bribed?) to keep the corp taxes as low as possible. Then they go Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich and NOT pay the low taxes anyways. If we were to tax them appropriately then it'd be a helluva lot more than 13b imo
95% of corporations and 100% of multinationals are greedy parasites who only virtue signal when it's profitable (mainstream) to do so.
Those that had any real virtue have been destroyed or acquired by the parasites.
Please, anyone who reads this, stop posting links to the mobile version of Wikipedia. It doesn’t switch automatically on PC, and I see it happen all the time. Just take the half a second to remove the “.m” from the beginning of the link, save everyone else from the pain of having to be surprised by it and taking the time to do it themselves.
Fixed & noted. Thanks!
And people using mobile can go stuff themselves? It doesn't switch automatically either way.
It does for me. On mobile if Wikipedia notices you are using a mobile browser, it automatically redirects you to the m. URL.
While I agree this is inconvenient, this sounds like something on Wikipedia to address.
I think it's going to be a losing battle to try to not only make everyone everywhere aware of the problem, let alone convince them to put in the (admittedly minimal) effort every time to deal with it.
I agree it would be best for Wikipedia to address this on their end, but I have actually no idea where to begin with asking them to make a change like this.
It actually does switch automatically on mobile, just not desktop, which is why I get annoyed enough when it happens to mention it.
So it takes you half a second to remove the "m"?
Outside of posting archive links to paywalls content people should make it a habit to share as canonical a link as they can imo, but yes this is a very much not important in the grand scheme of things.
Fuck that's depressing reading. I understand what US corporations get out of this but I'm still unsure why Ireland goes to this length to be a tax haven. What's in it for them?
They get to tax those trillions at an extremely low rate, right?
I'm pretty sure Ireland is now the richest country in the EU
Technically Luxembourg. But Ireland is #2 by both GDP per capita and by mean income.
This is my impression whilst visiting Roscommon.
Don't worry, if I believe the internet the EU will save us from Big Tech..... checks where Ireland and The Netherlands are..... Bugger.
Can I interest you in an iPhone 16? It’s the 16th generation of their pocket depressions rectangle and now costs more than it did last time.
800 moneys? Pretty sure that’s the same as last time
It's hard to believe but 16s are cheaper than 15s. I guess not enough 15s sold.
13bn dollars in missed taxes while already abusing a tax heaven.
When our stupid politicians will grow some balls (metaphorically, and independent of their gender-balanced commission/parliament), and we'll actually introduce a proper minimum corporate tax for the entire EU market, it will be 50bn. At least.
Combine this from all the big tech companies that are dodging our taxes, and we could quadruple our defense budget, double our education and healthcare spendings, and still supply every citizen with a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
It sounds so bizarre that Ireland has been fighting in court to avoid having to receive €13bn from Apple.
Because its main export was/is being a tax haven inside the EU.
Yep. They tried desperately to build up an IT economy and for that wanted to appease all the tech companies.
Yeah I get that, and that’ll be because of the long term financial benefits of enticing the companies there. But still…€13bn is a mad figure.
With 13 billion I could easily bribe every politician in the world to eradicate daylight savings.
Finally! Someone who’s working on the issues I actually care about!
Why not make it eternal? We shall save the daylight
Ok but can we keep it on the summer time? I like later sunsets.
But like, what financial benefits do they get from this? Like the country itself. I'm really bad in this area. Like, do they buy property or set up a thin business? Does that pull in enough?
As i see it, not an expert:
Basically, the plan goes back to the early 2000s. Irland did not have much tech industry and positioned itself as an English speaking country cheaper and more friendly than the UK, giving mostly US companies an easy place to enhance their EU business.
Definitely, but maintaining their status as a tax haven is more important I guess
My roads and infrastructure could sure use some of that money
You know how many bike stands could be built for that money? Dozens!
I could sure use some of that money to buy the next iPhone. Just imagine what my friends would think if I didn't.
That's a lot of money they have stolen there.
The biggest theft in history, even.
Why is nobody talking about this?? Oh yeah, because it's okay when our planetary overlords do it. Let's imprison some more homeless people for stealing bread instead!
I guess it's just normalized.
Because they control congress/parliament, etc.
Staggering to me how many people don't see this, and denigrate populism (not that I think you do, clearly those commenting on this issue see what's going on).
Well I am delighted. €13.1B + the 1.2 in interest represents what will be a bump of 16% of total tax revenue compared to 2023 (€88B total). There are lots of things that money can be used for.
Great to see, but are there punitive damages too, or even charges for interest? Because if not, then they'll just keep trying to pull stunts like this off again and again.
(My guess is that there isn't because it involes a deal with Ireland, but I would love to be proven wrong.)
Good. Pay your taxes.
I have no issue paying taxes, if they directly contribute to my environment being improved.
However, it is beyond infuriating, to have to pay taxes on already painstakingly obtained money, on both incoming and outgoing transactions, while companies like Apple sit on more money, than all of us combined will ever see, in a dozen generations of our families
