The European Commission said Friday it is appealing a court decision that Apple doesn’t have to repay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.

The appeal comes after the U.S. tech giant scored a big recent legal victory in its long battle with the European Union’s executive Commission, which has been trying to rein in multinationals’ ability to strike special tax deals with individual EU countries.

The EU’s General Court ruled that the commission wrongly declared in 2016 that Apple was given illegal state aid when it struck a low tax rate agreement with Irish authorities.

The EU Commission “respectfully considers that in its judgment the General Court has made a number of errors of law. For this reason, the Commission is bringing this matter before the European Court of Justice,” the bloc’s highest court, Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said.

The judgment can only be appealed on points of law. Vestager said it raises important legal issues that are relevant to applying rules against unfair state aid to tax cases.

The EU Commission had ordered Apple to pay for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. The commission said Apple used two shell companies in Ireland to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%.

In many cases, multinationals can pay taxes on the bulk of their revenue across the EU’s 27 countries in one EU country where they have regional headquarters. For Apple and many other U.S. tech companies, that’s Ireland. For small EU countries like Ireland, that helps attract international business and even a small amount of tax revenue is helpful for them. The net result, however, is that the companies often end up paying very low taxes.

The Irish government said it has always been clear that Apple paid the correct amount of tax and did not get state aid. It noted the appeal could take up to two years.

Apple said the case was never about how much tax it pays but where it’s required to pay. The appeal “will not alter the factual conclusions of the General Court, which proves that we have always abided by the law in Ireland, as we do everywhere we operate,” the company said.

Source: AP

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Apple is about to change its subscription services, like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and so on, with a new Health service announced in the coming weeks.

An announcement is likely next month or in October, a new report from Bloomberg claims. While Bloomberg focuses mostly on the revised subscription system, where different services are bundled together for a lower cost than individual subscriptions, for me it’s the Apple Fitness suggestion that’s the most striking. Here’s everything you need to know about both parts of the report.

Apple Fitness

This looks like being a whole new service, intriguingly. Apparently, it’s going to be made up of virtual fitness classes which can be used by an app that will work on the iPad as well as on the iPhone and Apple TV.

By the way, it might not be called Apple Fitness, but let’s remember that the iPhone Activity app, found on iPhones linked to Apple Watch, is being renamed Fitness in iOS 14.

This project, you might like to know, has the codename Seymour, and is seen as something to rival classes offered by Nike or Peleton.

Apple will doubtless have its own take on this – if it was going to be a carbon copy of Nike Training Club or Peleton’s offerings, it wouldn’t bother. The integration of the app across multiple Apple platforms is interesting, but since Nike and others do that already, there’s going to be more to it than that.

Bloomberg says that Seymour will be a new subscription that will be offered in a higher-end bundle with other Apple services. It’s not clear from this whether or not it will be available as a standalone service.

Apple One bundled services

The suggestion of Apple bundling its various subscriptions has been mooted for some time but seems to be gaining momentum just now. After all, services are increasingly important to Apple and there’s a lot to choose from. Apple Music costs $9.99 a month. The gaming service, Apple Arcade, is $4.99 a month, as is Apple TV+, although buying a wide range of Apple products delivered a year’s free subscription of the TV+ service. Then there’s Apple News+, $9.99 a month and iCloud which starts with a free tier but rises to $6.99 a month for 2TB of data storage.

The latest indication is that Apple will link multiple services together under the aegis of Apple One, though this may just be a working title.

Bloomberg says the Apple One bundle could be launched with the next iPhone, which means it could be revealed as early as September.

 

Multiple tiers

A basic Apple One package would pair Apple Music with Apple TV+ for, presumably, something less than the two would currently cost. The next step up might add Apple Arcade, then there would be another tier with Apple News+ in the mix and another that includes extra iCloud storage.

All of which is very similar to Amazon’s Prime offering, where delivery of purchases is included alongside a video streaming service, among other things, for one monthly fee.

 

Family tiers

The report claims that all these options will be skewed towards families. So far, Apple Music has two main tariffs, individual at $9.99 and family at $14.99. Arcade, News+ and TV+ all include family sharing of up to six people and the highest iCloud storage tier is shareable within a family.

What’s interesting about the Apple range of services is they are so different. Someone with Apple News+ may well like Apple Music but have no desire for Arcade, say. The addition of the family aspect means a more diverse group of interests could be satisfied.

 

The overall intention, of course, will be to increase subscription numbers. And if it’s priced carefully enough, it could be a no-brainer to upgrade.

Source:Forbes

 

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Facebook will buy REI’s new and unused Bellevue campus for nearly $368 million, the social media giant said on Monday.

The move further consolidates Facebook’s domain in the upscale Spring District east of Interstate 405 in Bellevue, The Seattle Times reported. Before the acquisition of the 400,000-square-foot (37,161-square-meter) REI offices, Facebook was already moving to occupy nearly 850,000 square feet (78,968 square meters) in three Spring District buildings.

The company, which opened its first Puget Sound office in 2010 with three engineers, now employs more than 5,000 workers in dozens of locations in Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond. That places it alongside Google as the area’s largest out-of-town tech employers. The Seattle area is home to Facebook’s second-largest office footprint, after its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

“Our growth over the last decade is a testament to the thriving community and immense talent pool that has welcomed us with open arms,” said Nick Raby, Facebook’s director of North American real estate, in a statement. “This purchase doubles downs on our investment in Bellevue and our commitment to the Pacific Northwest.”

The deal signals there is “no single approach” for white-collar employers envisioning the future of office space as work-from-home regimes stretch into their seventh month, said Greg Johnson, the CEO of Spring District developer Wright Runstad & Company.

REI decided to sell its campus after the coronavirus pandemic hammered sales, leading the outdoor equipment retailer to conclude that it couldn’t afford not to sell the space. The company’s work-from-home program also proved to be surprisingly successful, said Ben Steele, REI’s chief customer officer. REI will rely more heavily on remote work and smaller satellite offices.

Source: AP

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The Justice Department is expected to bring an antitrust action against Google in the coming weeks, focusing on its dominance in online search and whether it was used to stifle competition and hurt consumers, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Thursday.

The department also is examining Google’s online advertising practices, said the person, who could not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Antitrust officials at the department briefed state attorneys general Thursday on the planned action against Google, seeking support from states across the country that share concerns about Google’s conduct.

The anticipated lawsuit against Google could be the government’s biggest legal offensive to protect competition since the groundbreaking case against Microsoft almost 20 years ago.

Lawmakers and consumer advocates accuse Google of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost its profits.

Spokespeople for Google, whose parent company is Alphabet Inc., and headquarters is in Mountain View, California, declined comment Thursday.

Google has maintained that although its businesses are large, they are useful and beneficial to consumers. The company says its services face ample competition and have unleashed innovations that help people manage their lives. Most of its services are offered for free in exchange for personal information that helps Google sell its ads.

For over a year, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have pursued sweeping antitrust investigations of big tech companies, looking at whether Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple have hurt competition, stifled innovation or otherwise harmed consumers. And a bipartisan coalition of 50 U.S. states and territories, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, announced a year ago on the steps of the Supreme Court that they were investigating Google’s business practices. They cited “potential monopolistic behavior.”

Now with 40 days to the presidential election, the Justice Department is approaching legal action against Google and soliciting the support of state attorneys general on an issue of rare bipartisan agreement. Support from the states would bolster the Justice Department’s case against Google.

The Trump administration has long had Google in its sights. A top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said two years ago that the White House was considering whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation. Trump himself has often criticized Google, recycling unfounded claims by conservatives that the search giant is biased against conservatives and suppresses their viewpoints, interferes with U.S. elections and prefers working with the Chinese military over the Pentagon.

The company has denied the claims and insists that it never ranks search results to manipulate political views.

Antitrust regulators in Europe have cracked down on Google in recent years by imposing multibillion-dollar fines and ordering changes to its practices. Among other things, the regulators found that Google forced smartphone makers to install Google apps, thereby expanding its reach. Google has since allowed more options for alternative browsers and search apps to European Android phones.

Google controls about 90% of global web searches. Its dominance in online search and advertising enables it to target millions of consumers for their personal data. Google dwarfs other search competitors such as Microsoft’s Bing and Yelp and has faced harsh criticism in the past for favoring its own products over competitors at the top of search results.

Google also owns the leading web browser in Chrome, the world’s largest mobile operating system in Android, the top video site in YouTube and the most popular digital mapping system.

source: AP

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