The Evil Diaries: “Apple Will Pay”

This Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)/EU tax ruling is Kafkaesque – especially given that the EU intends that Eire banks the loot where Eire has indicated that it declines. (This is understandable given that Eire thought it had entered into an agreement with Apple.) Anyway, Apple has banked all this EU-derived profit offshore so to avoid US tax until such time as the loot is remitted to the US. So it is a timing difference given that tax paid in the EU is a direct credit to tax sought by the US government.

All this nonsense is simply a result of tax competition within the EU. It will have to stop. Had I been advising Apple I would have warned them of all this to come. So I expect some bright spark within Apple knows all this and, after some suitable spluttering, Apple will pay.

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It has been pointed out to me that Laura Trott, known to her mates as Trotty, is a good bet at 6/1 to win BBC’s SPOTY 2016. This is possible since she is up for a larf. And the audience will like that.

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Finally, The Times has recruited another racing writer, a Paddy von Behr (possibly of Irish-Germanic descent and specialising in short-selling for a day job). On Saturday he offered in his first public appearance the comment that a horse called Promising could provide evidence of (her) “nominative determinism”. She finished second and nearly won.