How Apple's Tax Games Make Globalization Look Like a Big Scam

Citizens around the globe have the feeling that large corporations collaborate with politicians at great liberty in order to create loopholes that give these firms special privileges. This is especially noticeable on matters of taxation... it is these corporations' ability to "manage" their tax domicile that directly undermines public support for globalization

The above is of course true. But what Apple is doing is perfectly legal, and arises as a consequence of multiple states' apparently-legitimate sovereignty -- in the U.S.'s case, it's sovereign right to (idiotically) charge a vastly-higher corporate tax rate (35%) than the rest of the world, and in Ireland's, its right to define "corporate residency" so liberally that Apple could create a "headquarters" with no office and no staff that, consequently, had no tax liability in Ireland (the entity's host country). Thus, the EC's actions, as fair-minded as they are, amount to basically arbitrary railroading of national governments in a post-hoc attempt to end-run around national laws. The true solution lies in a multilateral effort (likely through the OECD) to encourage nations to remove gross distortions from their tax codes and opportunities for gaming from their tax treaties.

Meanwhile, Ireland has now joined Apple in fighting back.