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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Technology
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Revenue doesn't equal profit. Apple's 2023 net profit was 96b, so a 14b fine is a substantial portion of their overall profits (~15%).
Of course, they're not hurting by any stretch of the imagination, 82b is still a STUPID amount of money, but we should be getting the facts and numbers correct
Revenue doesn't equal profit but many companies are using multiple schemes to show that they are not profitable. So we also need to check the revenue. A company can just increase the CEO salary to eat up all the profit.
And in Apple’s case they’re just being forced to pay back taxes, not even any fines. They’re basically undoing an illegal tax break from Ireland, which has spent $10 million in legal fees to fight against receiving it. Technically the Irish government is the one that fucked up here. Apple will have to pay and move forward paying a normal tax rate.
Still less than the lowest tax bracket in the US
Yeah but also this is only for their EU profit, so it’s really an even higher percentage.
It doesn’t really make sense to talk about money they made in other countries when talking about these fines, as if they make 5 billion in profit in country X and get fined 6 billion, they would still have lost money for operating in the country regardless of how much money they made other places. Since they lost money in the country, that fine would be high enough for them to want to fix their law breaking or totally pull out of the country, and so the fine accomplishes its purpose.