> Like the EU forcing Apple to pay $14B in back taxes after voiding a legal and consensual tax agreement between Apple and Ireland?
They're back taxes. The EU did right by every single law-abiding business when they forced Apple to remediate their unnatural and unfair arrangement. Not a single naturally competitive business suffered as a result of either action. The EU does not suffer economically by weeding out businesses that exploit it to avoid paying taxes, only Apple does.
A company and a country made a legal, consensual agreement (that the Irish public was also in favor of) and the EU stepped in and "re-interpreted" it to rent-seek.
This is transparent and obvious to everyone outside of the EU. Rent-seeking behavior is the reason companies are less interested in going to the EU.
> The EU does not suffer economically [...]
The EU suffers economically when it falls behind technologically.
The company was trying to rent-seek by profiting off access to markets and infrastructure supported by the public without paying their fair share of it, and achieve unfair competitive advantage against equivalent companies by violating EU regulations.
>The EU suffers economically when it falls behind technologically.
Is moving faster better? Certainly to generate wealth for a subset of the population but rarely for the general public.
This view that the US is doing better because a small group of rich people are increasing their share of the wealth while most of the country is at best treading water or worse seeing their economic power decrease, where the average person in the EU is actually better off is myopic at best and malicious at worse.
> and the EU stepped in and "re-interpreted" it to rent-seek.
No, they overrode the Irish decision because it was illegally anticompetitive. Please stop using Hacker News if your intention is to solely be butthurt over unfair rulings when they get corrected. Everyone on this website knows that Apple wields illegal anticompetitive power, nobody here should be surprised when Apple is forced to remediate tax fraud and deliberate DMA violations.
> The EU suffers economically when it falls behind technologically.
Well then it's a good thing Apple isn't leading the industry.
"Noooooo! Think of how many Vision Pro sales that Apple would miss out on by pulling out of Europe!" ...said nobody ever.
They're back taxes. The EU did right by every single law-abiding business when they forced Apple to remediate their unnatural and unfair arrangement. Not a single naturally competitive business suffered as a result of either action. The EU does not suffer economically by weeding out businesses that exploit it to avoid paying taxes, only Apple does.