Why Ireland doesn't want Apple's $22 billion in back taxes

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TODAY:

• Why Ireland's government doesn't want the almost $22 billion in back taxes it has collected from Apple.
• The World Health Organization is calling for urgent international action to stop the spread of tuberculosis.
• Over the past two weeks, consumers in all six Aussie states have found sewing needles hidden inside strawberries at grocery stores, leading to a nationwide hunt for the culprit.
• Missed The National last night? Watch it here

Taxing Apple

Ireland's government has collected almost $22 billion in back taxes from Apple and doesn't intend to do anything with it.

This morning,  Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed that the tech giant has paid €13.1 billion in disputed taxes, along with €1.2 billion in interest, in connection with a 2016 European Commission ruling that found Ireland had offered Apple "illegal" tax incentives for more than a decade.

Both the government and the firm are appealing the decision, saying that Apple's tax deal didn't violate any Irish or European laws, but the legal process is likely to take years.

Ireland, which has a corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent — about half that of other European countries — maintains that the EU ruling interferes with its ability to attract foreign investment.

In the meantime, the 14.3 billion euros — enough to cover Ireland's annual health care expenditure — will sit untouched in a "low-risk" investment account administered by Goldman Sachs and two investment firms.

Ireland was supposed to collect the funds within four months of the EU ruling, but took more than two years to do so. The delay frustrated the European Commission enough that it started proceedings against the Irish government in the European Court of Justice last October.

"It has taken time to establish the infrastructure and legal framework around the escrow fund, but this was essential to protect the interests of all parties to the agreement," Donohoe said today, expressing his hope that the legal case will now be dropped.

Apple can certainly afford the hit. Last year, the California-headquartered firm made more than $229 billion US in revenue, and ranked as the world's 11th-most-profitable company, reporting net earnings of $48.3 billion.

Critics say that one of the secrets of Apple's success has been its ability to shield its profits offshore, and cut favourable tax deals around the world.

Last fall, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists used the Paradise Papers leak to document how Apple had turned to various tax havens after the EU ruling, stashing $252 billion in offshore accounts.

The company said the complex financial manoeuvres were fully legal and that Apple — the largest taxpayer in the world — "pays every dollar it owes in every country."

In January, Apple announced plans to bring the overseas cash back to the United States and pay $38 billion in taxes. A considerable amount, although far less than the $78.6 billion the company would have owed before Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts.

In recent months, the EU has been discussing a plan to have tech giants, including Microsoft, Google and Apple, pay taxes in every country where they earn their income, rather than in the jurisdiction where they are headquartered. Although the firms have been lobbying hard to derail the proposed changes.

Apple can, however, claim one victory.

The new list of U.S. tariffs on Chinese-made goods, announced by President Trump this morning, doesn't include the Apple Watch, AirPods headphones, or components that go into its phones and other products.

Appearing on U.S. television this morning to promote the new iPhone X models — with larger screens and retail prices of up to $1,999 CDN — Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested that the company might be too big to tax.

"I don't want to speak for [the Trump administration], but I think they looked at this and said that it's not really great for the United States to put a tariff on those types of products," Cook said in an interview with Good Morning America.

"The iPhone is assembled in China, but the parts come from everywhere, including the United States. You know, the glass comes from Kentucky, there are chips that come from the U.S., and of course the research and development is all done in the United States," he said.

Battling tuberculosis

Tuberculosis infections and deaths are dropping, says a new World Health Organization report, but not quickly enough to meet a global goal of eradicating the disease by 2030.

The report, unveiled this afternoon in New York, says there were 1.6 million TB deaths in 2017, 100,000 fewer than the year before. Overall, it estimates that 54 million tuberculosis fatalities have been averted by enhanced detection and treatment efforts since 2000.

The rate of new infections is also falling, down by 2 per cent in 2017 from 10.4 million to 10 million, with greater reductions in South Africa and Russia.

At the same time, the WHO warns that drug-resistant strains of TB remain a "global public health crisis," infecting some 558,000 people last year.

And the organization estimates that one-quarter of the world's population has already been infected by the disease.  

The release of the report comes a week before a high-level meeting on tuberculosis at the UN in New York, which is expected to attract dozens of world leaders.

The WHO and the United Nations are hoping the gathering will inspire countries to "scale up" their financial commitments to the TB fight. At the moment, care and prevention programs remain $3.5 billion US short of their funding goals, and at current levels of giving, the gap will expand to $6.1 billion by 2022.

"It is unacceptable that millions lose their lives, and many more suffer daily from this preventable and curable disease," Dr Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO's Global TB Programme, said in a statement.

"We need to join forces to root out this disease that has a devastating social and economic impact on those who are 'left behind,' whose human rights and dignity are limited, and who struggle to access care. The time for action is now."

According to UN figures, Canada contributed $152 million US to international TB-eradication  efforts between 2006 and 2016, less than Italy ($175 million) Sweden ($185 million) or the Netherlands ($198 million). The United States remains the largest donor nation, having contributed $3.712 billion to the program over the same period.   

The last Canadian federal budget in March promised $27.5 million more over five years to battle TB in Canada's far North. Infection rates there are up to 35 times higher than the Canadian average, and 300 times more than in the non-indigenous, non-immigrant population.

In 2016, there were 1,737 active documented cases of TB across the country.

Earlier this week, Médecins Sans Frontières launched #StepUpforTB a social media campaign calling on world leaders to recommit to the fight. The Canadian chapter of the group is asking supporters to email Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ask him to lead the Canadian delegation at the high-level meeting.

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'A vicious crime'

Someone doesn't want Australians to eat strawberries.

Over the course of the past two weeks, consumers in all six Aussie states have found sewing needles hidden inside the ripe, red fruit, leading to a nationwide hunt for the culprit.  

One person was treated at hospital for "severe abdominal pains" after reportedly ingesting some of the metal bits.

"This a vicious crime. It's designed to injure, and possibly worse, members of the population at large," Greg Hunt, the Australian health minister, said in a television interview yesterday. "It's also an attack on the agriculture sector — the strawberry sector in particular."

At least eight brands of strawberries have now been contaminated, and supermarket chains across Australia and New Zealand have removed the berries from their shelves.

And it appears that the fruit sabotage may be spreading, with the arrest of a 62-year-old woman in the Queensland town of Mackay after she was caught jabbing a banana with a needle. (Police have characterized it as a copycat act, suggesting that the woman is suffering from mental health issues.)

This past weekend, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

"This is a $160-million industry to Queensland … and someone is trying to sabotage the industry, but also in doing that, they are putting babies' and childrens' and families' lives at risk," she said. "It is simply unacceptable, I am furious about this."

The national food safety watchdog has launched an investigation, but the country's growers aren't waiting for its findings. Several large producers have already added metal detectors to their farm production lines, and there are calls for tamper-proof packaging.

In the meantime, Australians are being advised to wash their berries thoroughly and cut them up before eating them.

But the measures will come too late to save this strawberry season, with wholesale prices having already fallen by more than half, wiping out all potential profits.  

It's not the first time someone has tried to take down part of the Australian food chain with foreign objects.

Back in 2006, a Brisbane bakery was forced to shut down production and destroy 4 million cakes after needles and razor blades were found in its products. That same year, the Sizzler restaurant chain shut all of its salad bars after rat pellets were found scattered amongst the lettuce at two locations.

Similar acts of sabotage have occurred around the world.

This past winter, customers of a discount supermarket in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg reported five cases where they found pins inside their food.

And in 2013, a Calgary woman was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of mischief for placing pins, nails and needles into cheese, bread and vegetables at a Co-op store. She later filed an $8 million defamation suit against the grocer, claiming the shame of her arrest caused her husband to commit suicide. Last fall, she was arrested for shoplifting at the same location.

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Today in history

Sept. 18, 1992: Nine killed in Giant Mine explosion

The strike at Giant Mine had been going on for four months and the company's use of replacement workers had created a bitter divide in Yellowknife. But few wanted to believe that one of the strikers was responsible for the explosion that killed nine men as they rode along in a mine cart 230 metres below the ground. Bespectacled, quiet Roger Warren didn't seem like the type, but he took RCMP investigators through the crime step-by-step during his 1993 confession. Then he spent the next decade professing his innocence before again taking sole responsibility. He was granted full parole in December 2016, after serving more than 20 years behind bars.

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