European Union - page 3

President Donald Trump is stepping up to defend Apple. Well, kind of.

The president ordered an investigation into France’s planned tax on big tech companies like Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. The Office of the United States Trade Representative said the tax “unfairly targets” American companies.

Update 1: France passed the tax Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse: “The legislation — dubbed the GAFA tax in an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — was passed by a simple show of hands in the Senate upper house after it was agreed by the National Assembly lower chamber earlier this month.”

The dutiful iPad has found itself in the middle of the United Kingdom’s bitter divide over leaving the European Union.

A freshly sworn-in member of European Parliament cried foul over being issued an iPad, implying to followers on Twitter the device was nothing more than a pricey perk.

But her grandstanding backfired when critics informed her that the iPad is a cost-saving tool for her to do her job.

The United States should follow the European Union’s lead and investigate Silicon Valley tech giants monopoly-like powers, President Donald Trump says.

Speaking with CNBC, Trump said “something’s going on” when it comes to the concentrated power of today’s tech titans. By fining these companies, he says that the EU gets “all this money — we should be doing that [too.]”

Germany’s finance minister Olaf Scholz has slammed tech giants that “pay taxes nowhere.”

It’s the latest shot at tech giants such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon which have previously clashed with the European Union on tax issues. In an interview with CNBC, Scholz argued that “we should find a global agreement” to shut tax avoidance loopholes.

Apple has agreed to pay French authorities around $571 million in back taxes, according to new reports.

Apple today confirmed the deal but did not disclose the sum itself. The agreement comes after a multi-year audit into Apple’s accounts by the French tax administration.

The Austrian government will announce plans this month to impose a levy on giant tech companies that make huge online profits that largely go untaxed.

Austria joins France to be among the first countries to tax internet and technology companies that shuttle profits to avoid higher taxes in each company.

In an op-ed for a German newspaper, Germany’s finance minister Olaf Scholz proposes a global minimum rate of corporation tax as one way to ensure that multinational corporations like Apple pay domestic taxes in line with the profits that they earn.

The European Union (EU) has long been attempting to get tech giants to stop using complex accounting tricks to shuffle profits around to minimize the amount that they pay in each country.

The European Union has given its official stamp of approval to Apple’s acquisition of UK-based music discovery app Shazam.

While the deal was announced way back in December, it has been held up until now by an EU antitrust investigation, based on the popularity of Shazam and the amount of data it holds. This investigation was requested by seven European countries, including France, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

Instapaper has finally returned to Europe following a GDPR blackout, and users can now subscribe to its new Premium plan to unlock additional features.

The service was pulled in the E.U. following the introduction of new data protection regulations, but now it’s fully compliant and ready to do business again. Here’s what you can expect if you upgrade with a Premium subscription.

Apple has its Lightning connector and everyone else has USB. But EU regulators are considering whether they need to force a common standard for phone chargers.

The idea is to cut down on the 51,000 tons of old chargers and cables thrown away each year.

The Commerce Dept. is reportedly talking to social networking companies and consumer advocates about rules to protect online privacy. Also included are possible protections for companies that have data breeches.

This is supposedly laying the groundwork for legislation that might be proposed this fall.

The U.S. wanted to be in Apple’s corner for its battle against the European Union, but a ruling from the EU’s highest court means that the United States is going to have to keep its distance.

The court upheld a previous December decision from a lower court, stating that the American government has not proved that it has any direct interest in the state aid case against Apple.

Spotify objects to Apple collecting a share of all the subscription fees paid by iOS users.  A law proposed today in European Union would force Apple and Spotify into mediation on this issue.

And it’s not just Spotify. Under the proposal, Apple, Google, and other tech giants would have to appoint mediators in all their disagreements with smaller companies.

A court case to determine if Apple owes the European Union about €13 billion will begin in about six months.  The trial will determine if Ireland gave Apple illegal tax incentives.

The two are actually appealing a decision by the European Commission made in 2016 that Ireland is effectively a tax haven.

Apple is among the tech giants which could be affected by a new European Union initiative that aims to tax tech multinationals at between 2 to 6 percent of their global revenue.

News of the massive potential tax shift was shared by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in a newspaper interview. Le Maire said that the total amount is likely to be “closer to 2 percent than 6 percent,” and will be announced in the coming weeks.

Apple will pay its 13 billion euros ($15.5 billion) tax bill between March and September this year, Ireland’s Department of Finance Secretary General Derek Moran has told the country’s Public Accounts Committee.

The European Commission ordered the Irish government to recover the money from Apple after ruling that it received illegal state aid in Ireland. While Ireland is still appealing the decision, it must still collect the money, which will then be placed in an escrow account until the dispute is settled.

Tim Cook is currently in France, where he making a variety of visits — including meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.

Cook will meet with President Macron, who assumed power in this year’s May election, later today. He has also made a number of stops, including meeting with one of Apple’s suppliers and paying his respects at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which honors American troops who died in Europe during World War II.

The European Union’s highest court has ruled that the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Act, aka the “snooper’s charter,” is illegal.

The EU objects to the government’s “general and indiscriminate” retention of emails and other electronic communications. While the EU acknowledges that this information can be helpful, they argue that it should only be gathered in specific targeted instances to stop terrorism or serious crime.

European Union finance ministers reportedly discussed how to divvy up the windfall from Apple’s 13 billion euros tax bill at a closed-door meeting in Slovakia over the weekend.

Some European governments were reportedly more keen on getting their hands on Apple’s money than others, with Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble saying, “Of course we’re looking into it.”

With his open letter defending Apple’s Irish tax strategy, Tim Cook positions his company as a sledgehammer-tossing freedom fighter at battle with Big Brother-style EU bureaucracy.

But unlike Cook’s previous missives on LGBT rights and the importance of privacy, this open letter seems unlikely to be met with near-unanimous support. While railing against the EU’s massive assessment of €13 billion euros in back taxes owed by Apple, Cook ignores the facts of the matter — and seems tone-deaf about painting the world’s biggest company as an underdog.

The verdict’s in on Apple’s European tax investigation, and the company has been handed a massive 13 billion euros ($14.52 billion) bill for unpaid back taxes in the Republic of Ireland.

The order was made by European Union competition officials, who ruled that Apple was taking advantage of illegal state aid that allowed the company to route profits through Ireland.

Apple’s tax drama in Europe will finally come to a close later this fall.

The iPhone-maker has come under scrutiny from the European Union due to its tax deal with Ireland that safe guards Apple from paying taxes on billions of dollars in profits. Ireland’s finance minister revealed that he has no idea which way the decision will go, but he was told it’s coming soon.

Apple has spoken up about the European Union investigation into its Irish tax affairs, telling a panel of E.U. investigators that it pays “every cent of tax” it owes in the country, and that it gets no advantage whatsoever compared with other companies.

Despite the noise being made about big multinationals using loopholes to avoid paying tax, Apple’s Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri has made it clear how much he thinks Apple owes as part of the European Union’s ongoing investigation.

“My estimate is zero,” he told the Financial Times. “I mean, if there is a fair outcome of the investigation, it should be zero.”

Don’t spend it all at once, E.U.!

After having initially been promised for a Christmas deadline, it now appears that both Apple and Ireland will have to  wait until February to receive the verdict of European Union regulators on whether or not Ireland has broken international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars there.