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Apple CEO Says "Won't Bring Home Money Until Tax Rates are Fair".

Visbek said:
Believe what? That corporations will pit governments against one another to find the lowest tax rates?
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:lamo

Yes, yes, when people go to places where they keep the most money they are pitting governments against each other.
 
justabubba said:
my take is that high taxes on cigarettes has largely been responsible for the decline of the portion of the population who smokes them
that would appear to vividly illustrate an instance in which the application of taxes did both fund government and control behavior in the intended direction
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Two problems with this that I see.

1. You have not substantiated your conclusion that high taxes on cigarettes has "largely been responsible for the decline of the portion of the population who smokes them". Although it's logical that higher taxes are a disincentive rather than an incentive, that doesn't prove that higher taxes have been a significant cause of the decline in smoking.

2. Even if it's granted that increased cigarette taxes have resulted in a desirable outcome, that doesn't establish the principle that using taxation as a tool for promoting what government considers "desirable" (or discouraging what government considers "undesirable") is a wise, just, or defensible use of taxation policy, or even a proper role for government.
 
Visbek said:
Incorrect. They rather literally demanded that Ireland lower their rates, or else they'd move their business elsewhere. They have browbeaten Ireland into offering extremely low tax rates, again paying almost nothing for all EU sales in 2014.

By the way, they ARE in fact repatriating foreign earnings, they're doing it in a way that avoids paying taxes. Long story short, the subsidiary (MIR) "pays" the US corporate entity for R&D / licensing.

Don't kid yourself, Apple is taking lots of legal but extraordinary steps to avoid paying taxes... including demanding unique favorable rates from the government of Ireland.
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I guess the Ireland thing didn't work out.

Apple must pay up to $14.5B in back taxes to Ireland
 
Henrin said:
Why is the government using taxes to influence behavior a good thing?
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in the instance i offered, it reduces the number of citizens who smoke cancer sticks
share with us why that is NOT a good outcome
 
JumpinJack said:
Apple made the money for the most part from the Americans, thanks to the tax system, which pays for the roads to get to the Apple store, the electrical grid to use many Apple products, the lights to light the stores and homes to use the products, the cell towers and tv towers so users can use the products, the health care system so that many people are healthy enough to use their products and buy them, and the economic system so that Americans have the expendable income to pay for the pricey products that Apple sells.

Apple should pay its fair share of taxes that it made off the backs of working Americans. Greed is all it is.

Don't pay attention to the man behind the screen. He's full of it. Apple would have plenty of deductions and credits off the 40% nominal rate. Exxon and GE in some years pay ZERO taxes. But it's possible that once you seek to escape the taxes, it's too late to claim some of the deductions and credits the company would have gotten, had it declared the income when it made it.
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That didn't sound right, so I made a quick trip to google world. Apple only made 37% of their money in the Americas. Americas includes every country in North and South America. That would mean the amount they made from Americans would be substantially less than 37%.

Therefore, if we use the logic from the rest of your post, then Apple owes the rest of the world, especially China, more than they owe us. I don't see how that can be attributed to greed.

Americans should stop buying Apple products. Let Apple earn its money in the country where it likes the tax rate.
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Since Apple sales are dropping in the US and growing in China, I guess they have already taken the advice.
 
justabubba said:
in the instance i offered, it reduces the number of citizens who smoke cancer sticks
share with us why that is NOT a good outcome
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Why should the government be trying to control what people put in their own bodies by purposely making things unaffordable? Just because it's harmful to their health doesn't work for me. If you ask me people have the right to harm their health.
 
Henrin said:
Why should the government be trying to control what people put in their own bodies by purposely making things unaffordable? Just because it's harmful to their health doesn't work for me. If you ask me people have the right to harm their health.
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while it may not work for you, implementing healthful public policy is wise for the government
 
justabubba said:
while it may not work for you, implementing healthful public policy is wise for the government
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I don't really give a **** about the interests of the state.
 
cpwill said:
:shrug: Apple is weighing whether or not to lose 40%. They're going to make rational decisions on that.
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Why do you keep saying "40%," when you know they don't pay that rate?


When you take a look at the competing studies on the issue, the result you come to is that the effective US Corporate Tax rate remains higher than it is abroad, though by not as much as is claimed either by nominal rate comparisons or those who do not weight the countries by size....
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Or, as that Forbes article says: "On average, the foreign effective tax rate is not much lower than the U.S. domestic tax rate." Which is pretty much what I said.

Another Forbes article points out that Apple's effective tax rate is around 25%. Really not seeing that as onerous.


Ah yes. That is a fantastic refutation to the notion that we are adopting - in the US - a policy of choking off our gooses in order to get more golden eggs.
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Again... Please.

The US is not, in any way shape or form, killing entrepreneurship via tax rates.

Over the past 30 years, the US has produced more entrepreneurs, more inventions, more new business practices than pretty much every major competitor. The EU cannot hold a candle to the tech revolution in the US. China does not innovate, it copies and executes.

Businesses are often moving their corporate HQs abroad to save as little as 1-2% on their tax rates. Given that they have also moved their jobs out of the US, and automated as many jobs as possible, I am not really sure how this is supposed to engender sympathy.

I might add that if the effective tax rates were genuinely onerous, that would be a decent reason to lower them. Merely saying "they pay less elsewhere!" is not proof of extortionate rates. Rather, it is merely an invitation to start a "race to the bottom" among nations, in which ultimately no one wins.


We ask them to abide by Byzantine Regulatory and Tax codes which have massive complexity costs and which not even the entities charged with enforcing them understand and which, when it comes to the corporate tax code, stupidly pushes business offshore.
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And yet, somehow, tens of thousands of businesses are not only able to abide by those regulations and file their taxes, they can afford to hire teams of tax attorneys and accountants to knock down their corporate tax rates.

Even small businesses routinely navigate those rules without big issues. I know I did.

Plus, while some regulations don't make sense or are used to harm competition, the majority are in place because the public demanded protection from, wait for it... unscrupulous businesses.

Sorry, but reflexive conservatism really does not further your cause.


....when they get to the point where they are rationally deciding that the US is a bad place to bring money home to invest, then from a public policy standpoint, we would be wise to do what we can to make ourselves a more attractive destination.
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Uh huh

Apple negotiated a 1% tax rate with Ireland, and then declared all their EU sales under that Irish subsidiary. The idea that the US could ever compete with that is ridiculous.

They devised a complex method to repatriate those proceeds from Ireland to the US without paying any taxes on it.

They outsourced pretty much all of their manufacturing outside the US.

When we subtract liabilities, they're sitting on roughly $170 billion in assets.

And as stated above, cutting tax rates solely to keep businesses in the US is a losing game. It's like football teams in cities -- they will threaten to leave, over and over again, demanding concession after concession, playing one city off another, until someone gives in and hands them a $4 billion stadium and all the parking and concession revenue and a fat tax credit.

While corporate taxes might benefit from an overhaul, the bottom line is that if you want to do business in the US, you should be willing and able to pay your damned taxes.
 
American said:
All completely legal until you prove otherwise.
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Yes, all completely legal... except for that pesky $14 billion they now owe in back taxes to the EU. Ooops.
 
Henrin said:
I don't really give a **** about the interests of the state.
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yea, that approach is going to work when effecting public policy

not always sarcasm.png
 
washunut said:
What does marginal tax rates have to do with this issue. Answer- Nothing. Also tell us which countries tax income from other nations again the answer is none.
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wrong
the answer is eritrea

Seems like you think there is no value to have companies bring back the $2 trillion that is being held hostage by Obama to make a political point.
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the value in the tax income on that taxable income. accounting 101

my turn for a question. if you had $2 trillion, where would you rather have it invested other than the USA?
 
justabubba said:
my take is that high taxes on cigarettes has largely been responsible for the decline of the portion of the population who smokes them
that would appear to vividly illustrate an instance in which the application of taxes did both fund government and control behavior in the intended direction
Click to expand...

I agree - however, I'd call it incentives and disincentives rather than controlling behavior. The government doesn't force you to quit smoking - prohibition was tried and failed - but they do provide significant disincentives for those currently smoking and those thinking of taking up the habit.
 
Visbek said:
Incorrect. They rather literally demanded that Ireland lower their rates, or else they'd move their business elsewhere. They have browbeaten Ireland into offering extremely low tax rates, again paying almost nothing for all EU sales in 2014.

By the way, they ARE in fact repatriating foreign earnings, they're doing it in a way that avoids paying taxes. Long story short, the subsidiary (MIR) "pays" the US corporate entity for R&D / licensing.

Don't kid yourself, Apple is taking lots of legal but extraordinary steps to avoid paying taxes... including demanding unique favorable rates from the government of Ireland.
Click to expand...

Do you have a similar hatred for companies, such as auto giants, who demand subsidies from local jurisdictions in order to site new plants or avoid closing current ones? How about sports teams/leagues who demand local subsidies to lure them or retain them?

You make it sound as if Apple is some rogue enterprise when all they're doing is optimizing their shareholders' value.
 
Visbek said:
I did not say there wasn't a problem.

What I asked is: How does a government encourage people to have children? To which you gave one answer:



I'm sorry to inform you that your proposal is slightly ridiculous, or at best counter-productive.

In the US, on average a child costs around $15,000 a year. Exactly how big of a tax incentive do you plan to provide here?

And what happens if your tax plan encourages poor people to have children? We shredded the safety nets years ago, and conservatives are still convinced that poor people have more kids in order to receive those sweet sweet (non-existent) welfare benefits.

Would you have more kids, if the government gave you a tax incentive?

Do we want parents to have more kids because they get a bigger tax break?
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You agree there's a problem, yet all you've got is throwing up your hands and giving up. I offered one possible incentive that government has the ability to implement. I'd rather see government spend or defer tax dollars in that endeavor than some of the crap they waste endless dollars on regularly.
 
Visbek said:
Incorrect. They rather literally demanded that Ireland lower their rates, or else they'd move their business elsewhere. They have browbeaten Ireland into offering extremely low tax rates, again paying almost nothing for all EU sales in 2014.

By the way, they ARE in fact repatriating foreign earnings, they're doing it in a way that avoids paying taxes. Long story short, the subsidiary (MIR) "pays" the US corporate entity for R&D / licensing.

Don't kid yourself, Apple is taking lots of legal but extraordinary steps to avoid paying taxes... including demanding unique favorable rates from the government of Ireland.
Click to expand...

Ireland and a number of other EU counties (and communities within members) have offered hundreds of foreign investors low tax rates for inward investment in their jurisdictions. This has angered larger EU countries and the Parliament. There were a few fights and angry words spoken against the countries competing for jobs by financing government spending out of other than corporate taxes.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Do you have a similar hatred for companies, such as auto giants, who demand subsidies from local jurisdictions in order to site new plants or avoid closing current ones? How about sports teams/leagues who demand local subsidies to lure them or retain them?
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Pretty much.

Not all tax abatements are awful, e.g. I support limited use for encouraging real estate development. That usually works out fairly well, as a developer is not going to pull up a 20 story building and move it to another state because a tax abatement expired.

In contrast: The companies who pit states against one another, promising jobs in exchange for steep tax abatements. In addition to causing races to the bottom of the tax brackets, the corporations wind up with no sense of loyalty, as they are happy to pull up stakes as soon as they get a better deal. If the abatements have a set term, the companies merely threaten to leave if they don't get extensions or more concessions. Larger companies are in better positions to negotiate, so it's inherently unfair to smaller companies that can't demand similar tax breaks. It erodes the social fabric, which is already a bit tattered alread.

While my distaste for this corporate behavior is somewhat tempered, I have an unbridled contempt for sports teams owners who pull this kind of bull****. Everything that goes wrong with corporate tax abatements is amplified when it comes to sports teams. The teams make immense profits for owners who are already insanely wealthy. The teams live off of civic pride and the support of the local community, yet they piss all over their own fans with their threats to leave and/or demands for hundreds of millions of dollars in stadium funding.

At least corporations tend to create some jobs and create some economic activity, rarely make demands anywhere as big as sports teams, and they target states rather than cities. Still, that's sort of like saying "a 1st degree burn doesn't hurt as much as a 2nd degree burn."


You make it sound as if Apple is some rogue enterprise when all they're doing is optimizing their shareholders' value.
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In general, I don't have a problem with big corporations, particularly those which are merely selling products for which there are plentiful competitors.

But in this particular matter, yes, they are bastards. They have a civic duty to pay their taxes, and they have done everything they can to ditch it in the past, and ensure they can ditch it in the future. And those tax rates are nowhere near egregious enough to elicit any sympathy from me for their tax-dodging methods.
 
Visbek said:
Why do you keep saying "40%," when you know they don't pay that rate?



Or, as that Forbes article says: "On average, the foreign effective tax rate is not much lower than the U.S. domestic tax rate." Which is pretty much what I said.

Another Forbes article points out that Apple's effective tax rate is around 25%. Really not seeing that as onerous.



Again... Please.

The US is not, in any way shape or form, killing entrepreneurship via tax rates.

Over the past 30 years, the US has produced more entrepreneurs, more inventions, more new business practices than pretty much every major competitor. The EU cannot hold a candle to the tech revolution in the US. China does not innovate, it copies and executes.

Businesses are often moving their corporate HQs abroad to save as little as 1-2% on their tax rates. Given that they have also moved their jobs out of the US, and automated as many jobs as possible, I am not really sure how this is supposed to engender sympathy.

I might add that if the effective tax rates were genuinely onerous, that would be a decent reason to lower them. Merely saying "they pay less elsewhere!" is not proof of extortionate rates. Rather, it is merely an invitation to start a "race to the bottom" among nations, in which ultimately no one wins.



And yet, somehow, tens of thousands of businesses are not only able to abide by those regulations and file their taxes, they can afford to hire teams of tax attorneys and accountants to knock down their corporate tax rates.

Even small businesses routinely navigate those rules without big issues. I know I did.

Plus, while some regulations don't make sense or are used to harm competition, the majority are in place because the public demanded protection from, wait for it... unscrupulous businesses.

Sorry, but reflexive conservatism really does not further your cause.



Uh huh

Apple negotiated a 1% tax rate with Ireland, and then declared all their EU sales under that Irish subsidiary. The idea that the US could ever compete with that is ridiculous.

They devised a complex method to repatriate those proceeds from Ireland to the US without paying any taxes on it.

They outsourced pretty much all of their manufacturing outside the US.

When we subtract liabilities, they're sitting on roughly $170 billion in assets.

And as stated above, cutting tax rates solely to keep businesses in the US is a losing game. It's like football teams in cities -- they will threaten to leave, over and over again, demanding concession after concession, playing one city off another, until someone gives in and hands them a $4 billion stadium and all the parking and concession revenue and a fat tax credit.

While corporate taxes might benefit from an overhaul, the bottom line is that if you want to do business in the US, you should be willing and able to pay your damned taxes.
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All the EU has done is point out to Ireland that they broke the membership rules by caving in to Apple, and effectively stealing what taxes they did get, from the other members
 
Visbek said:
Yes, all completely legal... except for that pesky $14 billion they now owe in back taxes to the EU. Ooops.
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The EU is just not interested in rule of law. That was best demonstrated by the way the Euro treaties have been dealt with, where countries like Germany have broken the covenants year for year in every year since signing the original documents. Oooops
That's the way the EU is. Mr Junck the President of the Commission was one of the EU politicians that negotiated the contracts.

Oooops. ... the EU again. ... :)

But the reality is that all the companies had agreements in place with the different EU governments claiming to have sovereignty. Are the countries not sovereign? Did they not know that they were not allowed to negotiate and sign the agreements? Had they misinformed the foreign investors?
 
Visbek said:
Incorrect. They rather literally demanded that Ireland lower their rates, or else they'd move their business elsewhere. They have browbeaten Ireland into offering extremely low tax rates, again paying almost nothing for all EU sales in 2014.

By the way, they ARE in fact repatriating foreign earnings, they're doing it in a way that avoids paying taxes. Long story short, the subsidiary (MIR) "pays" the US corporate entity for R&D / licensing.

Don't kid yourself, Apple is taking lots of legal but extraordinary steps to avoid paying taxes... including demanding unique favorable rates from the government of Ireland.
Click to expand...

If it is legal then your beef is with the tax code, not the company. The company is doing what it should do.
 
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