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Apple Pays Only 2% Corporate Tax Outside US
New submitter dryriver writes with this snippet from the BBC: "Apple paid only $713m (£445m) Tax in the year to 29 September on foreign pre-tax profits of $36.8bn (£23.0bn), a remarkably low rate of 1.9%. Apple channels much of its business in Europe through a subsidiary in the Republic of Ireland, which has lower corporation tax than Britain. But even Ireland charges 12.5%, compared with Britain's 24%. Apple is the latest company to be identified as paying low rates of overseas tax, following Starbucks, Facebook and Google in recent weeks. It has not been suggested that any of their tax avoidance schemes are illegal. Many multinational companies manage to pay substantially below the official corporation tax rates by using tax havens such as the Caribbean islands."
As long as it's tax avoidance, rather than tax evasion, nothing illegal in this. Everyone (corporations included) want to pay as little tax as possible. It's the governments job to close the loopholes. It's the beancounters and lawyars jobs to find the new ones.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
And yet, if everyone respect the spirit of the law instead of finding holes in the letter of it, we as a society would most likely be a whole lot better off.
Then again, this would require such things as integrity and honesty.
The simple fact is that once barriers to capital flow across national borders were torn down, the modern social state was doomed. When money flows across borders with little restriction, organizations whose implicit purpose is to maximize profit will shift their resources to countries with the lowest possible tax rates. This creates a race to the bottom in terms of tax rates, especially when large organizations that are capable of physically or financially moving from country to country move large percentages of their wealth away from countries like the US.
I have begun to realize that right wing countries seem to do well economically largely because they have reduced their tax rates below that of other less right wing countries. This brings a temporary influx wealth and a temporary economic boost. However if the tax rates do not continue to decline, large organizations will again begin to leave, bringing large deficits and economic decline.
Let me emphasize this: I believe right wing economic policies work (temporarily) because lower tax rates bring an influx of capital, and NOT primarily because of the inherent efficiency of the private sector in managing resources. I believe that the claimed "efficiencies" of private corporations, and the claimed "inefficiencies" of government organizations are highly overstated.
The implication of this is that if we as a society wish to have the amenities of a great civilization, then we will have to find a way to restrict the flow of capital across borders. Otherwise, we will be doomed to an asymptotic descent towards a minimum level of civilization. The gap between rich and poor will continue to increase, and, seemingly paradoxically, the economy will slowly grind towards a halt, as the pool of middle class consumers evaporates.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
SOOOO sick of the stupid toilet seat argument.
Do you know that toilet seat was custom designed and manufactured to fit in the bathroom of a US Air Force bomber? When you custom design and manufacture a couple hundred toilet seats, yes, they are going to cost $600. I bet the toilet seat on the space shuttle cost 100x that...
And please now bring up the $400 hammer. That one that was custom designed to work on repairs in a submarine without creating enough noise to be detected by sonar. Such a waste! But not as much as would have been wasted if a $1B nuclear submarine was detected because of a loud hammer.
Bug surprise, sometimes context matters.