EU Taxation Policies: US warns EU over Apple’s tax case

Is Apple cutting corners when paying taxes?

The US government has threatened the European Commission (EC) with retaliation if the body decides to proceed with its plan to demand millions of dollars in unpaid taxes from technology giant Apple.

The US Treasury Department issued a rare warning on Wednesday, August 24, accusing the Brussels-based body of becoming a “supranational tax authority” that poses a threat to international agreements concerning tax reform.

“The US Treasury Department continues to consider potential responses should the Commission continue its present course,” the Treasury said in its strongest language to date.

“A strongly preferred and mutually beneficial outcome would be a return to the system and practice of international tax cooperation that has long fostered cross-border investment between the United States and EU member states,” the warning added.

The European Union (EU) has been investigating a series of tax deals between Apple and Ireland which allow the iPhone maker to pay little or no tax on income earned across Europe.

The EC is expected to rule on the case next month. This is the biggest corporate tax avoidance investigation ever undertaken by the commission.

The EC is the executive body of the EU, responsible for implementing decisions, proposing legislation, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the bloc.

According to investment bank JP Morgan, if Apple is forced to retroactively pay the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent on its pre-tax profits, the company might need to cash out as much as $19 billion.

A 2013 report by US Senate confirmed that Apple has paid little to no taxes on at least $74 billion of the profit it earned by exploiting Irish and American tax laws.

Tim Cook, who became Apple’s CEO after the death of its founder Steve Jobs five years ago, has denounced the case as “political crap.”

“There is no truth behind it,” he said. “Apple pays every tax dollar we owe.”

The EU estimates that tax avoidance by multinational corporations costs member states anywhere between $50 million to $78 billion a year in lost taxes.

In addition to Apple, other American companies like Amazon and Starbucks are also suspected of tax evasion.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully the EU Commission does not cave-in for these US misguided threats and intimidations and tells the US Treasury Department where to shove this warning, which is protective of US corporate tax evaders.   

Read more: PressTV-US warns EU over Apple’s tax case

The Netherlands: Turkish economic delegation and roadshow welcomed in the Netherlands after failed coup attempt

A Turkish delegation headed by Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci and a number of deputies from different political parties visited the Netherlands on Aug. 23 to spread the word of Turkey’s economic potentials, as well as provide information about the July 15 failed coup attempt and its after effects.

Accompanying Zeybekci on the visit were Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Mehmet Muş, Republican People’s Party (CHP) MP Rıza Yalçınkaya, and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) MP Arzu Erdem, as well as members of the country’s business and trade organizations.   

The head of the Industry and Business Confederation of the Netherlands, Hans de Boer, welcomed the delegation and asked for its members to ask their counterparts questions.

“Turkey’s economic performance is quite amazing and we have high expectations about the Turkish economy. Our bilateral trade and economic ties have amounted to be around $6 billion. Some questions have popped up in our minds about Turkey after the coup attempt. Please tell us what is happening in Turkey,” said de Boer.

Zeybekci said that Dutch businesspeople already knew Turkey very well, yet the delegation now needed to elaborate further after the July 15 coup attempt.

“Nothing has changed in Turkey for investors following the failed coup attempt. Our banking, commercial and economic activities continued without any interruption on the first Monday after the coup attempt, mainly on July 18. Our macroeconomic indicators are quite good, but some rating agencies downgraded our records without considering these facts,” he noted.

“We are here to tell what has happened in Turkey along with the members of the country’s leading nongovernmental business organizations and deputies both from the ruling political party and the opposition parties. All political parties were at the parliament when the coup plotters bombed it late July 15. This is recorded on the world’s democracy history. We now all know that our democracy has been under the protection of our people,” he added.

Calling Turkey a land of opportunity with a huge potential for foreign investment, Zeybekci said, “For many centuries Turkey has been at the center of trade, regions and cultures. Our country has the same importance in the current period.”       

Trade between the Netherlands and Turkey has tripled over the past decade, and the Netherlands is one of Turkey’s main investors. Many Dutch companies have branches in Turkey doing business in foodstuffs, energy and technology, among others.       

Zeybekci noted that trade and economic ties between Turkey and the Netherlands fell short of their potential, noting that he hoped this could be corrected in the years to come.

Read more: Turkish economic delegation welcomed in Netherlands in roadshow after failed coup attempt - BUSINESS

America’s big blunders: Has everyone forgotten that the Vietnam and Iraq wars were unnecessary, stupid and destructive? - by David Masciotra

tt is always equally nauseating and amusing to see America, an individualistic country, get in touch with its inner Marx and transform into a nation of collectivists whenever discussion of war rises to the level of unavoidable noise pollution. “The pursuit of happiness” mutates into “give your life for your country” with little scrutiny of the nobility or necessity of the military misadventure at hand.

Ever since Donald Trump, in an act of stupidity and indecency now becoming characteristic, spoke ill of the Khan family, whose son died in the Army during the Iraq War, the entire country has communicated a pro-military mindset that papers over the truth regarding America’s foolish and lethal wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

It is basic courtesy and kindness to express sympathy for anyone who has to bury a child, and to demonstrate respect for anyone who suffers injury or dies in war, but in an understandable and natural urge to honor the grief of the Khans, the Democratic Party, major media figures and Republicans desperately trying to distance themselves from the traveling disaster of Donald Trump have dragged out the big, rancid words “service” and “sacrifice.” These words act as censors against honest evaluation of American foreign policy. Throughout the rush to give the Khan family the regard they deserve and that Trump could not offer, it is disturbing to see almost no acknowledgement of the reality that their son, along with 4,485 other Americans, died in a war that should have never taken place. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died, and many more sustained life-altering wounds and trauma, but Americans are never much for counting the casualties their country creates, rather than endures.

As much as Trump should apologize to the Khan family for his rude and thoughtless remarks, shouldn’t the architects and administrators of the war that killed Humayun Khan also apologize?

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the lack of any operative connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, and the creation of a terrorist playground in place of a once stable, albeit oppressive and miserable, country has led the overwhelming majority of Americans to view the war as a “mistake” and “not worth it.” The Iraq War, like the Vietnam War before it, was unnecessary, stupid and destructive. A rational observer who just awoke from a coma the week before the Democratic Convention would have little awareness of the blunder and crime of the Bush administration, given that for the past week, the entire country has spoken about the optional failure of policy as if it was World War II.

When the words “serve” and “sacrifice” populate political dialogue, it becomes crucial to ask, serve what and sacrifice for what?

Read more: America’s great mistakes: Has everyone forgotten that the Vietnam and Iraq wars were unnecessary, stupid and destructive? - Salon.com

Turkey: Lunatic Phycho Wedding Suicide Bomber 'was child aged 12-14' says Erdogan

Mr Erdogan said the so-called Islamic State (IS) was behind the Kurdish wedding party attack, which targeted a Kurdish wedding party. Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, is known to have several IS cells.

The bomb wounded 69 people, Mr Erdogan added, 17 of them seriously.

The bomber targeted the wedding guests as they danced in the street.

The BBC's Seref Isler, who is from Gaziantep, says the city of 1.5 million was already on edge because of events in Syria, where IS has been battling Syrian Kurdish forces.

Note EU-Digest: When will the press stop giving ISES the light of day, and call Daesh/ISES what they really are.. Mentally sick killers form an Imaginary Lunatic Psycho Filled Caliphate  

Turkey wedding suicide bomber 'was child aged 12-14' - BBC News

Syria: There is no method to this tragic madness as the global political establishment "implodes"- by RM

Aleppo, Syria

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 470,000 that had died in the war.  

These cold numbers are the first thing that hit you about Syria. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, according to the latest estimates; 11.5 percent of the population injured; 45 percent of a country of 22 million made homeless; 4 million refugees and 6.36 million internally displaced persons. Life expectancy is down from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. Welcome to the Syrian civil war. 

The Syrian conflict has become worse than a nightmare, because after a nightmare you usually wake-up to some kind of normality, instead this is an ongoing nightmare, from which you never wake up.

In the meantime, the global political establishment, our political leaders, representing different so-called "power blocks", blame everything and everyone, except themselves, as they fuel this war with weapons from their weapons industry and that from around the world. 

Worse still, is that these weapons purchases are financed with money from mostly ignorant and misinformed taxpayers. 

Taxpayers usually are more interested in using an App on their smartphone, or in finding out on social media, like Facebook,what a friend is doing, or even why his or her dog prefers a certain type of dog food above another. Being concerned about whatever does not directly affect him or her is the last thing on the agenda. 

In Europe the war in Syria hardly ever is looked at as a human tragedy, or has anyone ask who the real culprits are of this tragedy, but sadly equated to what kind of impact the large number of refugees will have on European living standards.

Former US President Dwight Eisenhouwer once said about the weapons industry: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron ".   

Yes indeed, arms dealers and their government cabinet-level cronies always profit from a war.

On top of that there is now also a perverse logic that pervades restrictions. Military aid and arms sales by the US, but certainly not restricted to them alone, are now approved to formerly off-limits regimes.

Of the 67 countries which have received or are set to receive U.S. military aid, 32 were  previously identified by the State Department as having "poor" or worse human rights records.

Obviously, the central question is: does this make the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love and have them funded ?

Every academic in the world will tell you, Syria today is the most awful humanitarian catastrophic drama to hit the Levant since World War II. Do politicians realize that and make an effort to remedy it? No, not at all.

Whole families with small children ‒ some people terribly wounded by the bombings ‒ living in  olive groves under the elements, with neither shelter nor provisions.

And the drama continues. Russia used its Security Council veto at the UN to prevent any concerted action against the regime. Moscow also keeps the weapons and bombs coming.

Turkey, a NATO member, whose leader has his own aspirations for the area, supports whoever can help him diminish the Kurdish influence in the area, even ISIS. 

The Iranians use their expertise in crowd control to help Assad control the demonstrations against his regime, and the Americans are funding and supplying a Kurdish proxy army and different rebel groups to fight Assad forces, in addition to also bombing so-called "enemy targets".

Our global political establishment has had chance after chance to remedy the situation, but greed and hypocricy within a defunct political world order has made that impossible.

Syria and the surrounding region is now the epicenter of what is still to come - it is the beginning of cataclysmic developments around the world that will clarify to the world at large, "who was", "who is", and "who will come".

© this report can be copied only if its source is mentioned

EU-Digest 

Climate change - alternative energy: Netherlands on brink of banning sale of petrol-fuelled cars - by J. Staufenberg

Europe appears poised to continue its move towards cutting fossil fuel use as the Netherlands joins a host of nations looking to pass innovative green energy laws.

The Dutch government has set a date for parliament to host a roundtable discussion that could see the sale of petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars banned by 2025.

If the measures proposed by the Labour Party in March are finally passed, it would join Norway and Denmark in making a concerted move to develop its electric car industry.

It comes after Germany saw all of its power supplied by renewable energies such as solar and wind power on one day in May as the economic powerhouse continues to phase out nuclear energy and fossil fuels.

And outside Europe, both India and China have demanded that citizens use their cars on alternate days only to reduce the exhaust fume production which is causing serious health problems for the populations of both nations.

The consensus-oriented parties of the Netherlands are set to consider a total ban on petrol and diesel cars in a debate on 13 October.

Richard Smokers, principle adviser in sustainable transport at the Dutch renewable technology company TNO, said the Dutch government was committed to meeting the Paris climate change agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions to 80 per cent less than the 1990 level. The plan requires the majority of passenger cars to be run on CO2-free energy by 2050.

"Dutch cities still have some problems to meet existing EU air quality standards and have formulated ambitions to improve air quality beyond these standards," he told The Independent, adding that the government had at the same time been reluctant to implement strict policies on the environment.

"The current government embraces long term targets and strives at meeting EU requirements, but is hesistant about proposing 'strong' policy measures.

"Instead it prefers to facilitate and stimulate initiatives from stakeholders in society."

If the law to ban the sale of new fossil-fuel cars by 2025 passes, a significant move will have been made towards phasing out all petrol and diesel cars by 2035, added Dr Smokers.

Read more: Climate change: Netherlands on brink of banning sale of petrol-fuelled cars | Climate Change | Environment | The Independent

Turkey: Absolute Power: Erdogan’s Self-Made Trap - by Stephan Richter

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would do well, for his own sake, to consider Lord Acton’s famous dictum. The 19th century English historian and politician is famous for his insight, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Mr. Erdogan is certainly succeeding with his effort to remove the few remaining obstacles to his near-totalitarian rule. The irony of it all is that the more he succeeds, the worse it becomes for his country — and, eventually, for himself.

Ultimately, Erdogan has but one ambition – a nation in total subservience to its fatherly leader. For that to become reality, he must root out any public display of Atatürk, the country’s predominant leader in its entire 20th century history. If Erdogan had his druthers, he would even eliminate the memory of him.

In a nutshell, Mr. Erdogan wants to be the new Atatürk, albeit in complete reverse. Erdogan stands against everything that Atatürk stood for.

Read more: Absolute Power: Erdogan’s Self-Made Trap - The Globalist