> Not taxing someone is not the same as paying them!
That is a terrible straw-man - no one ever claimed that in this thread. Additionally - your argument relies on word play: in practise, Walmart giving you a $10 bill after you buy a $100 item has the same effect as giving you a $10 discount on the item.
When one corp (Apple) pays less taxes than others in the same jurisdiction (Ireland in this case), it is unfair - logically and according to European law. If Irish taxes were uniformly low to all companies (including the German, French & Greek ones), the EU would have no case.
It's not a straw man: the EU itself is claiming it - that's what the entire thread is about. If the EU isn't claiming that low taxes are "state aid" then why are they using state aid rules to try and enforce a tax rise?
in practise, Walmart giving you a $10 bill after you buy a $100 item has the same effect as giving you a $10 discount on the item
I guess you meant a $90 discount? But regardless, the wordplay is on your side: if Walmart charge you $10 for an item then by definition that item costs $10. If they charge other people more, perhaps because they don't have a loyalty card, that doesn't mean they're giving you "aid" under any normal definition of the term as they're still charging you money. Aid would be if they gave away their products for free, or explicitly made a donation to some cause. Merely having differential pricing isn't "aid" for the same reason that an airline charging me less to fly economy isn't "aid", nor is it a discount.
That is a terrible straw-man - no one ever claimed that in this thread. Additionally - your argument relies on word play: in practise, Walmart giving you a $10 bill after you buy a $100 item has the same effect as giving you a $10 discount on the item.
When one corp (Apple) pays less taxes than others in the same jurisdiction (Ireland in this case), it is unfair - logically and according to European law. If Irish taxes were uniformly low to all companies (including the German, French & Greek ones), the EU would have no case.