Apple accused of killing civilisation

Stephen Fry and I finally start agreeing again

Apple’s number one British fanboy, next to Chris Martin, has suddenly waded into his favourite company over its tax dodging antics at the sidelines of its iPhone 7 launch.

Stephen Fry, who has been unable to say a bad word about Apple for years, has suddenly had an epiphany after the company’s tax antics came to light. Fry shocked everyone in the room when he slammed Apple’s tax affairs at the company’s flagship event of the year after being invited as a special guest.

The QI presenter said Apple needs to pay more tax than it does in an awkward remark that is likely to prove highly embarrassing for the tech giant.

Speaking to the BBC at Apple’s iPhone launch event, Fry said it “definitely should” be paying more tax, before adding that he didn’t know every detail.

“I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said tax is the price we pay for civilisation and if people are not paying tax then civilisation falters. Our streets don’t get lit. There’s more crime. Everything gets worse. I have absolutely no patience for any of these large companies getting away with such minuscule rates of taxation.”

We guess the entire room would have gone quiet as Apple could not agree with him less. The Cupertino outfit has been ordered to pay €13 billion (£11.1 billion) to the Irish government in back taxes by the European Commission. Apple was told that it was not right that it should only pay .5 percent tax when the rest of Ireland had to pay about 16 percent.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told an Irish newspaper that the EU tax ruling is “total political crap,” saying that anti-US bias is “one reason why we may have been targeted”. No, TIm, Apple was targeted because you don’t pay tax, just like Apple was targeted when it ran an illegal cartel to increase the price of books.

Still it is rather nice that Fry, who says a lot of things that make absolute common sense and yet has been unable to say much that was rational about Apple is finally back on the right side of the intellectual spectrum on this issue.