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How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Global Taxes
An anonymous reader writes "An article at the NY Times explains the how the most profitable tech company in the world becomes even more profitable by finding ways to avoid or minimize taxes. Quoting: 'Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company's profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California's corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada's? Zero. ... As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world. ... Without such tactics, Apple's federal tax bill in the United States most likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year, according to a recent study (PDF) by a former Treasury Department economist, Martin A. Sullivan. As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent."
Its not the size. Since 1980, the United States has been moving steadily towards becoming a fascist state and the transformation is nearly complete. Banks and Corporations love it, every one else is getting slaughtered. If you want to fix the problem, separate corporation and state.
Or building your roads.
Wow, it took an entire half hour for someone to toss off that canard? Read and learn.
Or educating kids.
Oh, you're funny. Have you set foot in an American starter-prison lately? Don't confuse indoctrination with education.
paying people to make sure Johnson & Johnson don't leave metal shards in your tylenol
Did some idiot teacher at a government school give you this asinine fantasy that vendors can make more money by killing their customers?
every dollar Apple keeps WILL go toward pushing impoverished Chinese people toward suicide
How, by giving them far better pay that they can get at other jobs in China? Do a bit of research: Foxconn workers have a lower suicide rate than every single state in the USA.
Go troll somewhere else.
That's advice you should take. Try educating yourself a bit before you do though, so you won't embarrass yourself like this again.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First of all, private organizations would have no incentive to build roads to nowhere. Secondly, "Learn some goddamn history" yourself. It's goverments, not corporations, that kill people by the tens of millions. Third, I know you want to believe that government keeps us all from just tilting our heads back and drowning in the rain like turkeys, but did you know that RIGHT NOW, the FDA is prohibiting beef producers from testing every single animal for mad cow disease? Do you know how many people the FDA kills every year by keeping drugs off the market that are saving lives in other countries?
Now, on to a few of your other canards:
Regulating insurance companies and the like. Insurance is one of the most regulated industries we have, that's why it's so insanely expensive. Every regulation raises the barrier to new competition, and drives up the cost of insurance policies. It wasn't always this way, google for "lodge doctors" if you want to learn how we once had medicine within just about everybody's reach, until government intervened to make it as expensive as possible.
Cops to keep you safe.
It's not the cops' job to keep us safe, and it would be impossible for them to even try to do so. Their job is to collect taxes and force displays of obedience to the state. If you want to be safe, carry a weapon. If you want to get tazed until you die from cardiac arrest, call a cop.
Privatization is the mantra of the robber barons
Umm, no. Regulation is the mantra of the robber barons, because it's regulation that protects them from competition.
They don't need idiots cheerleading for them from the sidelines.
Why does government have so many of you people doing exactly that?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
<sarcasm> The solution, of course, is to force everyone to buy health insurance </sarcasm>
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Most of the money that goes through government is used to damage the economy and people's lives, and that's especially true of increments.
Rich people don't necessarily use increased income to employ people. They may buy products and services, which ... increases someone else's income. They may leave it in a bank or put it in stocks or bonds ... which is invested in someone else's business.
"Income redistribution" - stealing from the rich and giving to the poor - pretty much guarantees that the money will be used unwisely, because that's how the poor became poor in the first place: unwise, unsupervised use of money. Consider the current scandal in EBT card abuse.
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