Don't Complain About The Rules If You Wrote Them

Multinational companies find Ireland attractive because corporate taxes are low.

Ireland likes multinational companies because they pay taxes in Ireland and that's money that can be used to pay for social welfare, infrastructure, nationalized medicine, and all sorts of expensive things that Ireland didn't have before it revised its tax codes to attract those multinational companies. That's what fueled the Celtic Tiger.

So if you're an American politician making a great deal of noise about your America-based multinational firms not paying taxes and pointing a finger at Ireland, point it at yourself.

The Congress of the United States writes the rules for taxing their own people. When some of those people hire intelligent accountants and find ways to avoid paying taxes, whose fault is it? Congress' fault, of course.

Carl Levin to Ireland: Change your tax laws so I don't have to change mine

Politicians like Carl Levin, of the great state of Michigan (auto industry booming back home, Carl?) are incensed over the way Apple managed to not pay the stipulated 35% corporate rate. It's laughable, all that outrage. He's one of those who created tax laws that permit Apple to shift profits overseas, so to try to appear as an innocent party to the problem is nonsense.

Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore is countering Mr. Levin's vitriol with the simple fact that Ireland's tax system is, in his word, transparent. It is what it is. There is a rate that was agreed to bring Apple to Ireland, and it is the rate that Apple pays or doesn't pay under that agreement. What they do in the U.S. is not Ireland's problem, nor is it Ireland's fault.

Eamon Gilmore to Carl Levin: Bollocks

In Ireland, 4,000 people are employed by Apple's operation, and it doesn't matter if they shuffle papers or iPod nanos. They are employed and paying taxes in Ireland, which needs the money to fund subsidies for the unemployed. Apple's strategy works for Ireland, so if Carl Levin doesn't like it, let him find his own way out of the tangle of laws he has helped create.

Mr. Levin, of course, wants to make it look as if Apple is one of those evil corporations cheating the American people, but that's only because he doesn't want his constituents asking how Apple gets away with it if it is, indeed, cheating which implies something illegal. There is nothing illegal in what Apple is doing. There is nothing illegal in what Ireland is doing.

Mr. Levin is free to create all sorts of bills and legislation to change the rules that he helped to create. He can talk about revamping the tax code instead of barking about tax havens. To do so, however, would open up the possibility that the party in opposition would change something about the tax code that he wants to keep, like soaking the rich. Better to cast aspersions on Apple and Ireland than accept blame for his own votes in Congress.