Apple still has cards to play in its EU game of thrones

Apple may finally begin to see some sensible decision-making come out of the European Commission, though it’s going to have to sit back and hang tight until behind-the-scene pressures force commissioners to see sense in their neo-liberal crusade. This may take some time.

But ultimately, despite the bluster, Europe knows it must find a more refined approach toward both competition regulation and taxation in tech. The most logical thing to do is to tax sales in the nation in which they are made, but for some reason the forces of wealth appropriation are against that. But even the US seems to be coming slowly round to that idea.

Don’t got the tech

You see, when it comes to one element of tech, digital services, the EU has to ask itself a few fundamental questions:

Does it have European competitors, or is it likely to build them in a finite length of time? If it does build those competitors, what about infrastructure? How much power, how many servers, how much water must it put in place and at what cost in order to compete effectively in server-based services?

How much will that cost, and can the anaemic economy that assails the entire so-called ‘developed’ world (and we’ve watched how that world is managed by those whose moral gazes turn blind when motivated by any form of self-interest) support that infra spend? Do we even have the staff?

You can explore many of these arguments, excellently put, in this Politico report.

Keeping the pressure on

Of course, it’s not just about infrastructure.

It’s also about collective political will, and this is lacking. Ireland, for example is home to a lot of tech firms, who account for 60% of its corporation tax. That means the nation is not inclined to support the most punitive elements of the Commissions power-fantasy. Germany also seems to think moderation may be required.

In the end, we may find that all of these attempts to punish Google, Apple and others turn out to be nothing by overtures toward a fair and equable global agreement on taxation of multinational firms. In my opinion, tax should be levied at the point and place of sale, as that’s the most logical point in the process for it to reside and also happens to be the point at which the payment made is most visible.

This also has the advantage of meaning the taxes paid go directly toward supporting the national infrastructure of the nation in which a sale (of goods or services) is made.

As Apple’s Irish taxation system showed (and continues to show), this isn’t how it currently works. Big firms use complex webs of company names to shift their cash around. It’s all legal, apparenlty, particulalry as our never-ending flocks of bought politicians in red and blue will go where they are told to go while telling us everything is sunny when in reality it’s raining.

Ultimately, for all of this, the only question that should be being asked is “how much profit is fair?” And the forces that control the means of production really don’t want to set any such levy to their own greed. The Commission’s approach doesn’t really bring solutions, but then nor does the existing system. Something’s got to give.

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