Apple

A backlash against the app stores of Apple Inc. and Google is gaining steam, with a growing number of companies saying the tech giants are collecting too high a tax for connecting consumers to developers’ wares.

Are you telling your clients and potential new clients what you do, or are you explaining to them why you do it?

Apple Inc. must still pay 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) to comply with a European Union back-tax order, nearly two years after the company’s fiscal deals with Ireland were ruled illegal.

It’s easy to be outraged about multinational corporations’ shifting of profits to tax havens, but much harder to figure out how to stop them from doing it without hurting the economy. Evidence exists that curbing tax avoidance opportunities makes these firms move actual jobs, not just accounting profits, overseas.

What was meant to be an opportunity to mingle in the sun in a southern French city turned partly into a public denunciation of tax practices of U.S. web giants.

Seattle levied an annual tax of about $50 million on big companies last week to help solve the city’s homeless problem. The tax was watered down from the original proposal but it was controversial and pitted the city against its most powerful corporate resident, Amazon.com Inc.

European authorities indicated they are open to dropping a case against Ireland for failing to collecting Apple Inc.’s tax arrears quickly enough, as the company paid over a first tranche of cash.

The U.S. lost a bid to help Apple Inc.’s court fight against the European Union’s order to pay Ireland a record 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in unpaid taxes.

Cash-rich companies that had been some of the biggest buyers of corporate bonds have started selling their holdings after tax law changes, according to Bank of America Corp. strategists.

A key figure disappeared from Apple Inc.’s latest quarterly report. It’s also gone from the regulatory filings of Netflix Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Oracle Corp.