European Commission – The problem was not Apple – Germany Funk

It is strange. As is done at once as if Apple blame payable in Ireland no tax. $ 13 billion plus interest should therefore from recovering from the US technology group of finance ministers in Dublin. The ordained this week the European Commission in Brussels. It did so against the will of enterprises and land, while half of Europe celebrates this campaign on behalf of tax fairness.

However: Each Apple executives would have been released quite rightly, if he had paid a billion to a billion in taxes, without that if someone calls – at least not in the State in which the company’s headquarters for Europe had subsided and the Middle East. So the problem was not Apple. Questions addressed contrast to the Irish Government, which has given Americans These kinds of special conditions and it still holds legal. In addition to the European Union: Their leaders like complaining about Switzerland or the Virgin Islands, when it comes to optimized control. but comparable practices they suffered for a long time and do it partly today except in Ireland in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Besides, it is not a specialty of US companies, location decisions to make financial concessions dependent. As VW Chattanooga chose 2008 as the place of his work in the US, partly the Land Niedersachsen owned automaker had more than 400 potential sites tested. The city in Tennessee had most offer: $ 570 million hard was the package of public benefits that existed for the contract

Alabama wanted to invest just 400 million dollars for a factory in Wolfsburg.. Those were the 150-million more than according to a report of the “Wall Street Journal” 15 years previously Mercedes got when the Group has its first plant in the United States. Among other things, Daimler acted out, a 20-year-long exemption from income taxes.

Different Fördungen, duties, tax or assessment rates in Germany

Yet curiously as at European level seems a rebellion from Germany about the case Apple. Because even neighboring municipalities hunt in this country companies from by offering particularly favorable conditions for land or business taxes. For years the government promoted it with millions and billions, to close premises in the old federal states and re-opening in the former GDR. . Behind the former border thronged with tax money is moved operations to be not only subsidize the wages

If German states set different subsidies, taxes, tax, or assessment rates, is like the competition for foreign investment speech: As have an individual real choice if their land is suddenly taken with the double or the kindergarten contributions on the street are only half as high. Apply this logic is apparently also only domestic German – why actually

The German policy sits at the fall Apple so in a glass house?. And it should not slip up. The Irish are Apple and Co grateful for the momentum and jobs that they bring to the country. You do not want to have the control billions. The Americans are also not amused: Pays Apple soon higher taxes in Europe, profit and thus the tax burden falls in the home country

And the EU.? Has the Commission’s decision legally inventory, this is the entry into a unified type and amount of tax law. This may solve some problems. However, it creates new ones. Turkey has already invited Apple to move its European headquarters to the Bosporus. The British also likely interested lift the eyebrow. You wrote Brussels soon known no more tax rates before – probably but the neighboring Irish. For a 0, x percent tax in Cork, the Commission could intervene, but not against an in York. Power Brussels model for success?

To rub the Proposed referendum on United Kingdom membership of the European Union as the hands, it is certainly too early. But until the effects are foreseeable, the unequal charges in their own country could be regulated originally brought. What is true for Ireland, can not be wrong for Wanne-Eickel.