📅 On This Day
Epic v. Apple Ruling Chips Away at App Store Revenue Model
On September 10, 2021, a federal judge largely upheld Apple's App Store but ordered the company to allow developers to link to outside payment methods — a partial yet landmark antitrust defeat. The ruling threatened Apple's 30% commission on in-app purchases, a key contributor to the services margins that fund its dividend. The decision signaled that the era of unchallenged App Store economics might be drawing to a close.
Apple's stock slipped on the news as investors weighed what a crack in App Store control could mean for services margins.
AAPL — Apple Inc.
🇺🇸 US
Source: The Verge; SEC Filings
📅 On This Day
Epic v. Apple Ruling Chips Away at App Store Revenue Model
On September 10, 2021, a federal judge largely upheld Apple's App Store but ordered the company to allow developers to link to outside payment methods — a partial yet landmark antitrust defeat. The ruling threatened Apple's 30% commission on in-app purchases, a key contributor to the services margins that fund its dividend. The decision signaled that the era of unchallenged App Store economics might be drawing to a close.
Apple's stock slipped on the news as investors weighed what a crack in App Store control could mean for services margins.
AAPL — Apple CDR (CAD Hedged)
🇺🇸 US
Source: The Verge; SEC Filings
🌍 Around the World
Ireland's 25% Withholding Tax Catches Many Dividend Investors Off Guard
Ireland levies a 25% Dividend Withholding Tax on payments to non-residents by default, though eligible U.S. investors can access a reduced 15% rate under the U.S.-Ireland tax treaty — if the right declarations are filed. The wrinkle: many companies domiciled in Ireland are operationally American firms that redomiciled via inversion, meaning the 15% Irish withholding is a new cost that simply didn't exist before. In IRAs, that 15% treaty rate is lost permanently with no mechanism for recovery.
Taxable-account holders can reclaim the full 15% via IRS Form 1116 — but IRA investors have no such remedy.
🇮🇪 IE
Source: PwC Tax Summaries; Irish Revenue guidance
🔥 Dividend Streak
Con Edison, Heir to Edison's First Plant, Marks 51 Years of Raises
Consolidated Edison traces its lineage directly to Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station, which began lighting lower Manhattan on September 4, 1882, serving 82 customers and 400 lamps. From that first flicker of centralized power, the company has grown into a New York utility institution — and has now raised its dividend 51 consecutive years, with increases stretching back to 1975. Few companies can claim their dividend history is as old as the electric grid itself.
Pearl Street Station lit 400 lamps in 1882; Con Edison has been rewarding shareholders every year since 1975.
ED — Consolidated Edison Inc
Source: ETHW Pearl Street Station history; Wikipedia: Consolidated Edison
💡 Did You Know
Most Major MLPs Have Quietly Become Ordinary Companies Since 2014
The MLP structure — once celebrated for tax-advantaged, high-yield distributions — began crumbling after a wave of distribution cuts between 2014 and 2020 exposed its fragility. Kinder Morgan converted to a C-corporation in 2014, Williams Companies in 2018, and others followed, trading away pass-through tax benefits to shed K-1 complexity and unlock index fund eligibility. The MLPs that remain, like Enterprise Products Partners and Energy Transfer, now operate far more conservatively, targeting yields in the 6–8% range rather than the 10%+ that once defined the sector.
Losing the K-1 headache opened these converted companies to billions in institutional and index-fund capital.
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence; Alerian MLP sector reports