How crazy is this?  The European Commission has ruled that Apple received unfair tax breaks from Ireland, and so must pay billions in back taxes — even though some top Irish officials insist that they don't want the money. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are angry at the European Commission, arguing that the long-delayed crackdown violated international norms — and that Apple's billions ultimately should go to the U.S. Treasury. Apple officials appear to agree with the U.S. position, but they manage their books in a way that keeps the money out of the Treasury's reach.

Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of multinational corporate bookkeeping. It's like Hollywood accounting, only instead of stiffing the talent, the object is to stiff the government. In Apple's case, that meant registering a pair of subsidiaries in Ireland essentially to collect revenue from the company's sales outside the U.S. while paying taxes to … no one. Ireland didn't tax the vast majority of that revenue because it wasn't earned there, and the countries where the sales were made didn't tax it because the money belonged to a company registered in Ireland.

Granted, these profits were subject to U.S. taxation — at least in theory — because the Internal Revenue Service imposes its levies on the global income of U.S. multinationals. By contrast, every other developed nation taxes only the money earned within their borders. The IRS doesn't actually collect taxes on foreign earnings, however, until the money is brought back into the U.S. That creates a powerful incentive for companies to park the cash overseas indefinitely, which large U.S. multinationals have done to the tune of $2.4 trillion.

Such tax-avoidance strategies may be entirely legal, but they're outrageous enough to have drawn bipartisan condemnation in Congress. Sadly, lawmakers have paid only lip service to the problem. While Congress has been stuck in endless debates over how to respond, the European Commission has been launching investigations into the strategies used by a number of multinationals — many of them U.S.-based — and levying penalties.

Which is not to say the commission is right; Ireland didn't appear to give Apple a deal that wasn't available to other multinationals. Worse, now that the commission has decided that Ireland's rules violated the European Union's, it's not fair to Apple to impose 12 years' worth of tax liability ex post facto.

The real problem is the country-by-country inconsistency in tax policy that allows companies to stash profits beyond any nation's reach.

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES