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Senate investigators: Apple sheltered $44 billion from taxes

Ikari said:
Then do something. If you just sit there and vote and do nothing to change the system, I'll have no sympathy for you when they throw you in jail for not paying up.
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Since I'm following the law and avoiding taxes using their system I wish you luck on that.

No you don't. You said so in your last post. You'll give nothing up, and you'll hide all your money regardless of the facts that government funding is what is pushing tech and advancement. That science and engineering has evolved to such a level that the money*time margin is not sustainable by private enterprise for base research. You think Verizon funded research into IC? Into cell tech? No, once that tech became engineerable, then they took over; they couldn't do it before. The days of Bell Labs are over, son. Medical science? Same thing. Pretty much all our tech, all our modern conveniences; more and more the base knowledge necessary to engineer such solutions is not obtainable through market.
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If the only entity that can create anything is the government then we have serious problems on our hands that need resolved ASAP. I see no reason any of us should hand money over to support something that is clearly broken and needed repaired.

You require something much more stable and able to source massive amounts of money that is required to advance further; government. But you don't want to pay for that. You "paid" for your phone, but you paid a company for production+profit costs. Taxes are what funded the research that ultimately bore the fruit of that tech. But you don't want to pay that. Somehow you feel entitled to the work of others. You'll give up nothing and take everything.
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No, I do not want to pay the government to be the source of all technology. You nailed it. I want that connection destroyed and not strengthened.


I've seen your sort before, you're a welfare queen. You don't want "voluntary" because you cannot live by the consequences of such. You want and you want and you want, but you don't wish to pay. That's the bottom line. You will not give up anything for your "voluntary" society, thinking instead that you deserve and are entitled to the sweat of other's brows.
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I told you what I want. I want a system that offers some sort of essence of voluntary exchange. The social contract demands it.

I said it before, I'll say it again. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
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and I'm not asking for one.
 
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ReformCollege said:
That is something that I haven't exactly thought of. But at the same time, that is exactly what we are seeing in this country anyways. Countries like Apple moving money overseas and not paying taxes on it. Also, you have to consider, that foreign capital may withdraw earnings over a period of time,but it still represents an investment in domestic companies. Also, I get the hunch that the US would have less of a problem with foreign capital overwhelming domestic capital because most of the world's largest corporations are American anyways. I suppose the easiest fix here is to just reduce the corporate tax to a level like say 20% where companies like Apple have far less incentive to move money offshore. I agree with most of the rest of your points.
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You actually don't need to do much, but you should drop this tax on foreign earned income. This would allow the immediate patriation of the Apple money and the other billions held by other US corporations abroad.

After that, make sure your corporate tax rates are not causing a bleed of businesses to other jurisdictions and yes, you will be fine. The US is strong enough it doesn't need to compete to attract businesses through aggresively low corporate tax rates, but you are not strong enough to ignore what the baseline is in other competitive jurisdictions.
 
Henrin said:
Now why would they hire cheap labor overseas? Gee, I wonder.
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Because we incentivize it rather than make it unprofitable? Nothing like making big profits in sweatshop nations like Bangladesh that ban unions and kill 100s of workers in factory disasters.

Doesn't it make you proud!
 
CJ 2.0 said:
You actually don't need to do much, but you should drop this tax on foreign earned income. This would allow the immediate patriation of the Apple money and the other billions held by other US corporations abroad.

After that, make sure your corporate tax rates are not causing a bleed of businesses to other jurisdictions and yes, you will be fine. The US is strong enough it doesn't need to compete to attract businesses through aggresively low corporate tax rates, but you are not strong enough to ignore what the baseline is in other competitive jurisdictions.
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The race to the bottom. Just like Ireland. And what happened to Ireland again? Oh, yeah, it went bankrupt!

Here's a better concept. Companies want to be in the US (or they wouldn't be here). Punish those the go overseas to avoid taxes by taxing them globally, disregarding spin offs and subsidiaries and tarifing products from tax haven refugee corps. Then the companies that remain here will have a competive edge and will prosper, instead of vice versa.
 
head of joaquin said:
Because we incentivize it rather than make it unprofitable? Nothing like making big profits in sweatshop nations like Bangladesh that ban unions and kill 100s of workers in factory disasters.

Doesn't it make you proud!
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Lol! So the government should trap people? Yeah, that is my idea of a good time.
 
head of joaquin said:
The race to the bottom. Just like Ireland. And what happened to Ireland again? Oh, yeah, it went bankrupt!

Here's a better concept. Companies want to be in the US (or they wouldn't be here). Punish those the go overseas to avoid taxes by taxing them globally, disregarding spin offs and subsidiaries and tarifing products from tax haven refugee corps. Then the companies that remain here will have a competive edge and will prosper, instead of vice versa.
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Yeah, what we really need to do is make the US have arms that reach around the world. That is a brilliant idea. You should stop coming up with ideas.
 
Henrin said:
Since I'm following the law and avoiding taxes using their system I wish you luck on that.
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Government will always get paid. Don't matter if they got to kill your wife to make it happen; they have the guns and they get paid.

Henrin said:
If the only entity that can create anything is the government then we have serious problems on our hands that need resolved ASAP. I see no reason any of us should hand money over to support something that is clearly broken and needed repaired.
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It's not that it's "broken", it's just aggregated to such levels as it can no longer be handled by private enterprise alone. Government invests in the base research, private industry takes over when there is an engineerable product. It's nothing more than the realistic aggregation of human knowledge. And it's only going to grow, humanity never progressed through stagnation. As we grow and we become more and more complex, we are going to need the system and tools in place to support such a large, aggregate, technologically advanced society. Innate to the system; might as well get over it now.

Henrin said:
No, I do not want to pay the government to be the source of all technology. You nailed it. I want that connection destroyed and not strengthened.
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Then give up your iPhone. But you won't. You won't give up the benefits you reap from having this aggregate system; you just don't want to pay for it. You want a free lunch. And I am unsympathetic should your theft ever be discovered and punished.

Henrin said:
I told you what I want. I want a system that offers some sort of essence of voluntary exchange. The social contract demands it.
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The written contract does not. And I am telling you that what you say is at odds with what you claim you want. You do not want voluntary exchange because you will not give up anything that came from government funding. Welfare queen, take but not pay in. The entitled lot who think that everyone's work is theirs. It's pathetic.

Henrin said:
and I'm not asking for one.
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You are most certainly asking for one. You want the benefits of what we've achieved without having to pay for the necessary pieces which brought that advancement. You want the free lunch. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can progress to being an actual libertarian.
 
head of joaquin said:
The race to the bottom. Just like Ireland. And what happened to Ireland again? Oh, yeah, it went bankrupt!
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Again. This is a talking point. Not an argument.

Look, Steve Jobs ate vegetables. And what happened to him again? Oh yeah, he got cancer and died.

Damned vegetables.

Here's a better concept. Companies want to be in the US (or they wouldn't be here). Punish those the go overseas to avoid taxes by taxing them globally, disregarding spin offs and subsidiaries and tarifing products from tax haven refugee corps. Then the companies that remain here will have a competive edge and will prosper, instead of vice versa.
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So it's permanent spite now? Force your companies to pay taxes in the US forever or permanently bar them from US markets?

OK, so what do you do with an asset sale then? Sony picks up all of the assets of Columbia but leaves the corporate shell to die. Are you taxing Sony as a domestic now? It isn't and never was an American entity.

See, companies don't do that now because of potential adverse tax implications, but you are leaning pretty heavily on the scales on that one.

How about this. Columbia spins off its foreign business through an asset sale to a company with ownership identical to its current shareholders and sets up reciprocal long term supply agreements. So you have Columbia US which is American but the rest of the business has its own floated stock and no US business. Again, makes no sense in the current environemnt, but makes far mroe sense if you are proposing to try to extract billions from them every year.

And again, what do you do with the Canadian car wash business that dips a toe into the Buffalo market? Or the ag company supplying you with fertilizer? Or blackberry or Samsung or H&M or Fair Trade Coffee importers or the foreign producer of hipster beard and moustache-care products? You have no answers because you prefer not to think these things through. You are trying to develop policy based on emotion and your grievances with those who are more successful than you, rather than with legitimate policy goals and a well-thought out understanding of how markets work.

And the "analysis" is exactly what you would expect as a result.
 
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Henrin said:
Yeah, what we really need to do is make the US have arms that reach around the world. That is a brilliant idea. You should stop coming up with ideas.
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Pssst: international trade agreements allow capital to move to China, or Ireland for that matter.

Why is it that conservatives just don't understand the basics?
 
CJ 2.0 said:
Again. This is a talking point. Not an argument.

Look, Steve Jobs ate vegetables. And what happened to him again? Oh yeah, he got cancer and died.

Damned vegetables.
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Can't argue the merits of the policy. Got it.

Meantime I can. Low corporate taxes produce basket cases like Ireland. And you want us to follow that road. Pathology? You're soaking in it.

So it's permanent spite now? Force your companies to pay taxes in the US forever or permanently bar them from US markets?

OK, so what do you do with an asset sale then? Sony picks up all of the assets of Columbia but leaves the corporate shell to die. Are you taxing Sony as a domestic now? It isn't and never was an American entity.

See, companies don't do that now because of potential adverse tax implications, but you are leaning pretty heavily on the scales on that one.

How about this. Columbia spins off its foreign business through an asset sale to a company with ownership identical to its current shareholders and sets up reciprocal long term supply agreements. So you have Columbia US which is American but the rest of the business has its own floated stock and no US business. Again, makes no sense in the current environemnt, but makes far mroe sense if you are proposing to try to extract billions from them every year.

And again, what do you do with the Canadian car wash business that dips a toe into the Buffalo market? Or the ag company supplying you with fertilizer? Or blackberry or Samsung or H&M or Fair Trade Coffee importers? You have no answers because you prefer not to think these thigns through. You are trying to develop policy based on emotion and your grievances with those who are more successful than you, rather than with legitimate policy goals and a well-thought out understanding of how markets work.

And the "analysis" is exactly what you would expect as a result.
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Again, you're simply being counterfactual. If companies can leave the US, then they already have. You act as if they've stayed here out of a sense of loyalty. That's sweet but not part of reality.

Companies that remain in the US paying US taxes should be rewarded by making sure companies that leave pay higher taxes, or at least the same. It's really that simply. You keep talking about tax incentives but the most obvious one is staring you in the face: right now, this second Apple was better off taxwise by funnelling income to a Irish shell corp. So we punish that, increasing taxes and Apple, and thus rewarding companies that haven't engaged in this conduct. Indeed, we probably could lower corporate taxes in the US if we raised taxes on the corporations who shirk paying by foreign spin offs and shells.
 
Ikari said:
Government will always get paid. Don't matter if they got to kill your wife to make it happen; they have the guns and they get paid.
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I'm not married, so where are they going to find my wife? :2razz: Btw, great job supporting the state.

It's not that it's "broken", it's just aggregated to such levels as it can no longer be handled by private enterprise alone. Government invests in the base research, private industry takes over when there is an engineerable product. It's nothing more than the realistic aggregation of human knowledge. And it's only going to grow, humanity never progressed through stagnation. As we grow and we become more and more complex, we are going to need the system and tools in place to support such a large, aggregate, technologically advanced society. Innate to the system; might as well get over it now.
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Not going to do that. Government does not have the authority to fund research and furthermore I do not agree with them funding any research. The market CAN handle it and while we might get smaller advancements that is something I'm ok with.

Then give up your iPhone. But you won't. You won't give up the benefits you reap from having this aggregate system; you just don't want to pay for it. You want a free lunch. And I am unsympathetic should your theft ever be discovered and punished.
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Lol! What theft?


The written contract does not. And I am telling you that what you say is at odds with what you claim you want. You do not want voluntary exchange because you will not give up anything that came from government funding. Welfare queen, take but not pay in. The entitled lot who think that everyone's work is theirs. It's pathetic.
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Yes, I will most likely avoid the tariff based system that I already said I support. :2razz:


You are most certainly asking for one. You want the benefits of what we've achieved without having to pay for the necessary pieces which brought that advancement. You want the free lunch. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can progress to being an actual libertarian.
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Actual libertarian? Hahaha.. This coming from the guy that wants to tax the value of land. Give me a ****ing break.
 
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head of joaquin said:
Pssst: international trade agreements allow capital to move to China, or Ireland for that matter.

Why is it that conservatives just don't understand the basics?
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What are you talking about now?
 
head of joaquin said:
Pssst: international trade agreements allow capital to move to China, or Ireland for that matter.

Why is it that conservatives just don't understand the basics?
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Perhaps I want the authority of the state to end at it's borders??
 
Henrin said:
Perhaps I want the authority of the state to end at it's borders??
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So you're against the international treaties that allowed Apple to send capital to Ireland?

You need to think this through. Capital doesn't go overseas in suitcases -- it's protected by international treaties.
 
head of joaquin said:
So you're against the international treaties that allowed Apple to send capital to Ireland?

You need to think this through. Capital doesn't go overseas in suitcases -- it's protected by international treaties.
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Government does not need to assist in the movement of capital.
 
Henrin said:
You tell me. How is someone supposed to get away from you?
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By posting rational, well thought out arguments. Otherwise I'm there to point out the opposite. Given that, you can't escape.
 
Henrin said:
Government does not need to assist in the movement of capital.
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Jesus man, your knowledge of how capital goes overseas is truly profoundly nugatory. You have a future as Rand Paul's economic advisor.
 
head of joaquin said:
Jesus man, your knowledge of how capital goes overseas is truly profoundly nugatory. You have a future as Rand Paul's economic advisor.
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How is it hard to understand the government is not needed for that??
 
head of joaquin said:
By posting rational, well thought out arguments. Otherwise I'm there to point out the opposite. Given that, you can't escape.
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:roll: I mean the arms of the US, obviously. You know what we call someone that can't leave the arms of someone else?
 
head of joaquin said:
Because we incentivize it rather than make it unprofitable? Nothing like making big profits in sweatshop nations like Bangladesh that ban unions and kill 100s of workers in factory disasters.

Doesn't it make you proud!
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You're right. We should just pull all of our factories out of Bangladesh and let their people starve.
 
head of joaquin said:
Can't argue the merits of the policy. Got it.
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I already did and you came back with the basic talking point. Appologies for calling you on it.

Meantime I can. Low corporate taxes produce basket cases like Ireland.
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No, they didn't, and you provided no evidence or even third party support for the proposition. All you had were some lefty EU parliament weenies complaining that ireland should increase taxes.

And you want us to follow that road. Pathology? You're soaking in it.
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Right. I am advocating that you be Ireland by doing what every single other country in the world does and not taxing corporate income earned abroad at the corproate level because it causes exactly what you have seen it cause with Apple and others, and this is dumb policy.

Straw man much?

And just so you don't miss it, you have nothing here. Your "arguments" have no support, your leaps have no foundation, and your understanding of policy and economics seems woefully inadequate in this context.

Again, you're simply being counterfactual. If companies can leave the US, then they already have. You act as if they've stayed here out of a sense of loyalty. That's sweet but not part of reality.
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No, you again seem to ignore the reality of a dynamic economy. Companies right now are in the state that is best for them right now. Change the numbers, or change the game, and incentives change. Leaving things where they are now will not have a major impact, even over time, though some companies may "tip" at some point so that the benefits of residency in the US stop outweighing the (completely unnecessary, inefficient and self-destructive) cost imposed on them by your dumb-ass tax on foreign earnings. But you change it so they can't legally avoid the tax by parking the money in a foreign sub, and you have changed the calculus, such that a lot more companies would decide it just isn't worth it to continue to maintain US residency.

This is all pretty simple to understand, I would think.

Companies that remain in the US paying US taxes should be rewarded by making sure companies that leave pay higher taxes, or at least the same. It's really that simply.
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except it's not. I just ran through a few easy examples, which you (again) ignored because thinking about this is not convenient for you.

You keep talking about tax incentives but the most obvious one is staring you in the face: right now, this second Apple was better off taxwise by funnelling income to a Irish shell corp. So we punish that, increasing taxes and Apple, and thus rewarding companies that haven't engaged in this conduct.
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And then apple has 2 choices. Do what you want them to do and suck it up. Or leave. And in those circumstances, you stand to lose far mroe from apple leaving than it does, since it's shareholders are staring $40 billion in losses square in the face.

Indeed, we probably could lower corporate taxes in the US if we raised taxes on the corporations who shirk paying by foreign spin offs and shells.
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You really don't get it. And if we had money trees we wouldn't need taxes at all.

Yay! Money Trees!
 
head of joaquin said:
Psssst: exactly -- who needs them if they don't pay taxes and the hire cheap labor overseas. You're catching on.
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Your poe act is getting tiresome, no one can be that much of a partisan robot.
 
Anthony60 said:
The government makes the tax laws, not Apple. The government is the one that says, do this with your money, and you owe tax on it. Do something else, and you don't. So, now you think they should collect taxes on it anyway? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Besides, Apple avoided $44 billion? That is a crapload of taxes for any company to be paying, above what they are already paying. If that was the case, we would have to fix that with a big tax cut. We are not here to serve this government, it's the other way around. People on the left need to get that through their collective heads.
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Funny, you call yourself a "Conservative" but you advocate for a very anti-free market system.

Apple got away with not paying much taxes because it hired expensive lawyers and accountants to essentially find and create no nexus tax havens. You are praising what amounts to those with money can literally buy success over those without such funds. That we should encourage a very uneven playing field that favors those who will bend and possibly break the law over those who play within the rules.

I take it you were cheering for Microsoft as it actively engaged in anti-capitalistic behaviors to stamp out competition at the expense of the consumer?
 
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