Having had a chance to gather my thoughts, some considerations on the political dynamics coming out of the Apple case below.

TL;DR: It’s about to get https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔥" title="Feuer" aria-label="Emoji: Feuer">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔥" title="Feuer" aria-label="Emoji: Feuer">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🔥" title="Feuer" aria-label="Emoji: Feuer">
First off, there´s an element of surprise in the Court´s decision, or more precisely in the content of the decision. That places new and unexpected political pressure on EU actors to *do something*.
You might have expected Apple to win, but definitely not so comprehensively. Despite years of inquiry, and documented poor procedure by the Irish Revenue, the Commission could not come close to the evidence base required to show illegal state aid.
So what will the Commission do? It will, unquestionably, come out swinging. Significant political resources have been put into building stronger, more progressive EU work on corporate tax avoidance and tax havens in recent years. https://twitter.com/phdskat/status/1283331436922183682">https://twitter.com/phdskat/s...
Here, political activism by the Commission has been key to the EU´s rise in international tax policy, alongside the European Parliament,
and critical European politicians, operating in an increasingly accommodating political environment. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/tn329/">https://osf.io/preprints...
In particular, Commission will start a new dogfight with EU Member States, trying to circumvent their *key* constraint - the unanimity requirement on EU tax matters - by invoking a hazy Single Market provision. More innovative, aggressive EC activism. https://www.ft.com/content/d1fffd14-c68c-11ea-9d81-eb7f2a294e50">https://www.ft.com/content/d...
Beyond the Commission, the Apple loss is likely to (re)ignite the case for individual countries to introduce special taxes on (US) digital firms, and to crack down on tax havens more broadly.
This has serious repercussions for discussions ongoing at the OECD/G20 for years, to find a new global agreement on taxing the digital economy, which is supposed to resolve transatlantic tensions.
As Europe (and increasingly the rest of the world) proposes new digital taxes, the US retaliates with tariffs, and threatens to walk away from negotiations - a vicious circle of political escalation. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/politics/us-digital-tax-talks.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/1...
So the Apple case is huuuge. It will likely reverberate in:

- more aggressive short- and medium political initiative from the EU
- more impetus for countries to adopt special digital taxes
- increased risk of global tax conflict scuppering OECD/G20 agreement.

/ends
You can follow @phdskat.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: