Apple tells Ireland, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
Apple have told the Irish people not to look for any back taxes from its financial dealings in the country. They said that they could buy and sell Ireland if they wanted to and warns the country against ‘playing with the big boys’. Company spokesperson, Jean Westerly, said, in a refreshingly candid comment, ‘Ireland shouldn’t rely on their cuteness to protect them from us, if they try to take Apple on we will make orphans of their children. Our Apple symbol will be picking bits of Harp out of its teeth for weeks.’
Apple were quick to point out that there were any number of other countries they could exploit if Ireland weren’t willing to play ball. Countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana, to name but a few, would be more than willing to roll over and take it from the tech leaders, be the Apple core base. And they pointed out that labour in those countries would be much cheaper than Ireland, whose ‘workers were selfishly resistant to slavery.’
Ireland’s lack of gratitude to everything Apple has done for it as a country astounds the multinational giant. ‘No-one had ever even heard of Eye-er-land before we put it on the map’, said their PR officer Hank ‘Chip’ Chipperson. ‘We made that country. Before we got there they were all just sitting around in fields, eating potatoes, drinking whiskey and either marrying their cousins or playing ‘Snake’ on their Nokia 3210s.’
Apple were also keen to mention that they were in no position to be able to pay any back taxes anyway, having only made a net profit of 18.6 billion dollars last quarter, which when you convert to sterling is only 13.08 billion pounds or a measly 5.6 billion Kuwaiti Dinar. Head of finance Richie Schultz iterates, ‘if we were forced to move to Kuwait we’d be down 13 billion.’
The Irish Government, in an effort to keep their seat at the big table, insisted that they didn’t want to rock the boat. ‘No-one wants to exploit the developing world more than us,’ a spokesperson for Taoiseach Enda Kenny said making reference to Ireland’s 77 double taxation treaties, ‘but honestly, we don’t want your money. Any investigations into our ‘understanding’ is being led by the EU. We tried to brown bag it, but those EU guys are weird. They think brown bags are for sandwiches.’
Time will tell how much Ireland’s failure to brush this under the carpet has upset the ‘Apple’ cart.
