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."

Comments

California deserves all that money

[alen]

Just imagine all the mandates they can fund if they had all this money

Re:Bullshit.

[mellon]

Yup, because Apple in no way benefits from access to the Silicon Valley job market. They could hire all those programmers in Bangalore instead, but they choose to support the Silicon Valley economy out of a sense of generosity and community spirit.

Re:To be fair

[dkf]

Mind you, we are talking about the same voting population who 4 years after Wall Street caused the biggest global economic melt down in close to a century through pure greed and stupidity is objecting to the implementation of any kind of regulation of the baking and finance sector.

Now that takes the cake. Sometimes you've just got to roll with it, but I really don't want to see financiers loafing around on our dime. It's not all bun and games in the real economy.