July 15, 2020 - 11:50am
The Irish government has just lost 13 billion euros — and it couldn’t be happier about it.
The money was in the form of tax that the European Commission ruled was owed by Apple to the Irish government.
Dublin (and Apple) disagreed, insisting that the tax break was legitimate and that no one owed anyone anything. The Commission, however, was adamant that the tax break amounted to illegal state aid and so ordered Apple to pay it back to the Irish government with interest.
Obviously, the Irish government — like all governments — could really do with €13 billion right now. But being compelled to take the money would be a body-blow to the Republic’s status as one of the EU’s tax havens, which, in the long-run, is worth a lot more.
There are those in the Commission who would dearly love to establish a level-playing field on tax within the single market — and their defeat today will embolden efforts to abolish the internal tax havens.
According to a report in the Financial Times, the plan is to use Article 116 of the EU treaty which is about eliminating Single Market “distortions” caused by “law, regulation or administrative action in Member States”. The wording looks vague enough to include tax policy. Crucially, using this mechanism to strike down cushy tax deals would be subject to Qualified Majority Voting i.e. the tax haven countries wouldn’t have a veto.
The likely targets, including Ireland and the Netherlands, would of course resist and have ways of hitting back — for instance by blocking or diluting the post-Covid recovery funds for the worst hit EU countries.
Once again, we can see the EU for what it really is: a giant game of beggar-my-neighbour in which each player uses every means at its disposal — whether it’s gaming the Single Market, exploiting the single currency or fighting over the EU budget — to extract as much value as possible from their friends.
It’s a game that the UK habitually lost, which is why we left the table.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
peterfranklin_
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis confirms my own belief, that psychology is NOT a science. What would interest me more, however, is whether the same observations, weak links, errors apply also to the so-called hard sciences, such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc.
Or climate science.
Behold: Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College. QED.
Excellent article which needs to have wide readership, especially in universities and schools. it goes well with the recent UnHerd article by David Goodhart on challenging universities. I may soon start being optimistic that there is a shift back towards healthy scepticism and common sense. The scandals around so-called climate science, the failure of modelling for the pandemic etc, the crude attempts to manipulate history, have started to make people wary of so-called experts who have an agenda.
My takeaway is that middle class dinner party pundits are thick?
(Very suggestible through being largely ignorant and, improatntly with just enough shreds of knowledge to convince themselves they are not ignorant) )
It’s probably wrong..but I am having it anyway.
Because I like the sound of it.
It is also nice because it illustrates my own foundation base of knowledge which is stuff your nana said..
In recent months this has brought to mind…
Cover your mouth when you cough
Wash your hands …PROPERLY
and here…. A Little Knowledge is a dangerous thing…..
(As is illustrated here, the dangerous thing can also apply to middle class scientists on the make, wanting a leg up into media punditland book-writing stardom..).
As a physicist, I have to distinguish between objective reality (without which science is pointless) and representations of reality. The human brain can only ever accommodate simplified representations of reality, not reality itself. We often use different representations for different purposes – each highlighting a different aspect of reality. Some representations have a very narrow range of usefulness, some broader (but, perhaps less precise at any one point). Some representations are so far from reality as to be worthless. We call these, “false”. However, nothing you hold in your brain is absolutely “true”.
The job of science is to map out regions of falsehood. “Truth” lies somewhere in what is what is not yet shown to be false.
At our Food Bank we give a chocolate bar and a packet of biscuits as standard with each order. At Easter we got a big donation of chocolate eggs, which we also gave out. I do worry at the inclusion of a whole kilo of sugar in every box and high sugar fruit squash. But as you say, it’s not for us to judge. We’ve had the oddest donations – quinoa, a haggis, packets of venison soup. I do wish we could work out ways to give more fresh food.
While I’m aware of Independent SAGE, I’ve heard not a single example of output featured on MSM. That might be because they haven’t come up with anything that isn’t merely differences of opinion, or that media don’t invite them to speak. What is your experience of ASAGE?
So, just like the FederaL Government and the States, then
It’s not just the Netherlands; Hungary and several E. European countries, Malta and Cyprus also have low corporate tax rates. Ergo, perhaps there won’t be a qualified majority.
US states do the same thing…
I thought competition was a good thing…NO?
I think I’ll get the book. Thanks for the review, Mons Traldi.
Jos, why bother? Psychology a science? I don’t think so; never in a thousand years. Constant causes can’t lead to variable effects can they? If so then human agency cannot be studied scientifically can it? If on the other hand human agency doesn’t exist then neither does humanism. Add to this the crisis of science in general since godel and Heisenberg and psychology and its avatars go up in smoke with all the nonsense based on its findings…
So now the UK, leaving the EU to deregulate and become Singapore-on-Thames, is going to be able to play Beggar-My-Neighbour even more effectively. Will such behaviour be less fiendish done outside the EU then it would be within it?
Perhaps not, but at least we will have stopped being taken for a ride by the EU, and paying for the privilege.
I think so as we would be outside and openly doing it…while not inside and like Ireland, being two faced about doing it.
But also deals would done and policies altered and changed, so the negotiations would be more transparent and the trade-offs necessary (as will happen with Brexit itself) more apparent to the ordinary person in the street.
The EU benefits from an inbuilt bias on behalf of many countries, not Ireland so much, that it is better than what we had…whether Franco, Salazaar, The Greek Generals or the Soviet Empire and it’s vassal states.
As younger people grow up and that older person memory fades (and re even the most recent of those things..you have to 40 and older to remember it even as a child) the questioning of the opaque way the EU operates, the economic stagnation many countries have started to become mired in, and the reality of divergent paths are looked at by younger voters it may well try and reform itself…hopefully into a body with the remit to encourage pan-European free trade which is what it was, rather than a bureaucratically driven super-state project….then we could vote to go back in….!
The EU, whether you brexit children admit it or not, is about preserving PEACE throughout Europe, not about whether Joe blow saves a penny on potatoes or not. Your generation hasn’t seen the horror or you would act differently
No that is what NATO is about, except the EU is undermining it.
“I think so as we would be outside and openly doing it…while not inside and like Ireland, being two faced about doing it.”
Irish tax policy is public information and national competence, hardly “two faced”.
Every year (according to National Crime Agency) c.100 billion of dirty money flows through London. Money often stolen from poor people around the world.
And for years UK GOV has done absolutely nothing to fight it.
“economic stagnation”? Really?
– Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, Austria are richer than UK.
– Eastern European countries have grown much faster than UK (for well known reasons.)
– France is as rich as UK
– Ireland is richer
– Italy/Greece has stagnated
– Spain/Portugal have gotten out of the crisis.
Less hypocritical, certainly
Couldn’t agree more Basil. Peter F’s comments quite puerile actually.
Puerile to have good faith in a union formed with unity, openness and goodwill in mind? Not a great example for our children.
Perhaps we could do with being fiends for a while.
Maybe, maybe not, although I tend to think not is more realistic as an outcome.
The point is we can choose how we tax companies and Ireland should be able to do exactly that. The EU has no business telling countries how they should tax companies in their jurisdiction, although of course that is what they are increasingly doing and is another good reason why we voted to leave.