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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."
No they haven't. They probably haven't been even taxed once.
Your dividends have been, sort of....
Personally though I don't think corps should be taxed at all. It gives them too much ammo to say things like 'taxation without representation' etc.
If we didn't tax corps then I think it would be easier to ban political speech by corporations.
The income to individuals from corps would then be taxable as ordinary income and we wouldn't have the whining about dividends being taxed twice, or the baloney about US taxes on corporations being high.
We also wouldn't have the baloney regarding local jurisdictions competing for corps based on tax give backs.
All in all it would be a nicer world....