Guest Post by Joe Hoft
Today the unelected bureaucrats at the European Union (EU)came out with their tax judgement regarding multinational Apple –
Apple Inc. was ordered to repay a record 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) plus interest after the European Commission said Ireland illegally slashed the iPhone maker’s tax bill.
The world’s richest company benefited from a “selective tax treatment” in Ireland that gave it a “significant advantage over other businesses,” the European Union regulator said Tuesday. It’s the largest tax penalty in a three-year crackdown on sweetheart fiscal deals granted by EU nations.
At the same time the EU Chief is helping his native Luxemburg become a tax haven for companies like Pepsi and Ikea:
The appearance of Jean–Claude Juncker before MEPs yesterday over the ‘LuxLeaks’ tax scandal was branded a ‘farce’, after the European Commission president spent little more than an hour answering questions before leaving early.
Mr Juncker, who was installed in his role at the top of the EU without being elected by taxpayers, dismissed suggestions he had been involved in helping major international companies such as Pepsi and Ikea set up favourable tax deals in his native country.
This is despite him serving as prime minister of Europe’s eighth least-populous state for more than 18 years.
The ridiculous treatment of taxing and penalizing some companies like Apple over other companies like Pepsi because Apple used Irish tax benefits over Luxemburg’s which were used by Pepsi is confusing. The ruling today makes no sense.
The people in the EU are beginning to put the pieces together and Brexit was just the beginning. For example, more than 77,000 Europeans signed a petition calling for “exemplary measures” against former European Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso for joining Goldman Sachs.
Barroso served as president of the European Commission for 10 years up to 2014. He joined Goldman Sachs as an advisor and non-executive chairman last month.
The Change.org petition was started by a “spontaneous group of employees of the European Institutions,” and is open until the end of the month.
Goldman Sachs is singled out as being “one of the banks most implicated in the subprime crisis that led to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 – the worst since the Great Depression – as well as one of the banks most involved in the Greek debt crisis, having helped Greece dissimulate its deficit before speculating in 2009-2010 against it in full knowledge of the unsustainability of its debt.”
Barroso’s new job has attracted criticism, especially from France. When his move was announced, the leader of France’s far-right, Marine Le Pen, said it was not surprising as because “the EU serves big finance, not the people.”
The people of the world are beginning to see the elitists for what they are – dishonest and greedy non-elected bureaucrats.