Slashdot Mirror
Tim Cook Calls Apple's Tax Questions 'Political Crap' (cbsnews.com)
nerdyalien writes: Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed as "total political crap" the notion that the tech giant was avoiding taxes. Cook's remarks, made on CBS' 60 Minutes show, come amid a debate in the United States over corporations avoiding taxes through techniques such as so-called inversion deals, where a company redomiciles its tax base to another country. Apple holds $181.1 billion in offshore profits, more than any other U.S. company, and would owe an estimated $59.2 billion in taxes if it tried to bring the money back to the U.S., a recent study based on SEC filings showed. The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the "digital age," Cook said.
Any day now there will be a startup which "fixes" the tax code.
I like the notion of taxing American stockholders. I assume that it would work specifically in cases of tax inversion though. I'm talking about like a 40% tax on capital gains and dividends. But only if the company is participating in tax inversion, which would have to be carefully defined.
The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the "digital age," Cook said.
Then we should update the tax code and close the loopholes Apple and every single other large corporation has been abusing in the process.
And then make you pay the taxes you owe, retroactively, Tim, if you're going to try and be a smartass about it.
Did anyone expect him to say "yeah, actually we feel bad about it and will be paying a few billion of what we owe next year"?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I suggest Apple sue the arse off of Have I Got News For You (a BBC TV comedy program, that focuses on political humour, and isn't afraid to take the piss out of current news articles, politicians, and even invites them on to stand their ground - one of the regular guests is Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, who's been sued multiple times for defamation and libel and very rarely loses... the magazine itself is the origin of the Arkell v. Pressdram case (Google it!)).
Only last week, the implication that Apple was avoiding tax was made on the show (joking that the bite out of the Apple logo was "the bit where the tax should be"), laughed at, and broadcast. Strange, then, that Apple haven't made a fuss or a statement about that, isn't it?
It's easy to make a lot of money if you don't pay the proper taxes. Until the laws changes and it catches up with you. A few companies in the EU are finding that out at the moment. Luxembourg looks likely to no longer be the EU tax haven it once was.
So the famous hard hitting news series 60 minutes makes a infomercial for Apple. Gee, a liberal giant news organization helping a liberal giant company.
Go figure. Apple is so fleecing America with its tax loopholes its not even funny. They are certainly not the only company. But CBS doing a segment on how great Apple is does not help. I lost faith in 60 Minutes when Dan Rather started doing fiction.
So all the Chinese (for example) companies in America pay no Chinese taxes?
Riiiiiggggghhhhhttttttt...
.
"It doesn't work like that."
Taxing them more simply means higher prices for all the customers. That would be us, not them. If they keep prices the same, it means less investment by them in jobs, or higher prices for us, period. Further, while most people see reports of huge "cash in the bank" values for some of these outfits, they fail to look at the financials of same to discover that there are loans against most of the balance in most cases, often as not used to buyback shares to keep earnings/outstanding share up and thus share prices (and C-suite compensation) as well - most companies don't actually have a lot of that cash in hand (though some do). At any rate, a tax on them is simply a tax on the customers in the end, there's no free of that sort in this universe. I suppose one could make the argument that since I'm not a customer of theirs, I wouldn't care - and I'm not - but costing for example, Apple customers more would trickle down to me in the form of other raised prices I'd pay for things made by their customers in the end, anyway.
It's dangerous to live in a world of flat-broke spendthrift governments who use words like "fair" to mean "gimme more of your money to buy your votes with" - whether a company or an individual. Consumption taxes are effectively regressive... While profits have a poor record of trickling down, losses seem to always do so; is that rain, or are you p*ssing on my back? TANSTAFFL
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
But you cannot pick which laws you follow and which not based on if you agree when they were made.
Also, dear Tim, you and all those other corporate criminals and sociapaths forget one thing about takes: everyone, people as well as companies, give a share of what they make so "stuff" for the community can be created. That can be infrastructure or defense to make sure the basis where you LIVE stays intact and can prosper, that is education making sure you have an informed population that is not turning the world into a hellhole but into something that still prospers economically, that can be social help, medical help, that can be money given to things corporations would not follow, as basic research and art.
By evading those takes, you take all that away from everyone.
In short: you are a sociopath who does not get what "taxes" actually are. Like so many other people.
Any avoidance of US taxation is justified as it goes towards creating war and destruction!
They are not U.S. profits. The U.S. has no right to tax them uuntil and unless Apple does something stupid, and converts them into U.S. profits.
Is there anything Apple could spend that money on in the U.S.?
It's not like they are going to build factories in the U.S. and raise their costs of production by complying with U.S. environmental laws, or hiring more expensive U.S. workers.
Even if they did bring it back to the U.S. as profits, and offset the environmental costs by subtracting out the shipping costs in exchange: you aren't going to get U.S. jobs out of it: those tasks will be automated. Sorry, blue collar workers: no paycheck for you!
Like Steve Jobs told Obama in Feb 2011, when Obama asked what it would take to manufacture Apple products in the U.S. ("Why can’t that work come home?") -- the answer is: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
Others agree. On 23 Jan 2015:
“Our economy is in deep trouble,” said billionaire and self-professed American Dream-liver Jeff Greene in an interview yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We’ve had a realistic level of job destruction, and those jobs aren’t coming back.”
So other than funding the U.S. government with a bunch of money so they can bomb more Muslims and make them even more pissed off at the U.S. (is that even fricking possible?!?), there's no good reason to convert it to a dividend from the subsidiary, paid to the U.S. Apple headquarters (which is, from an accounting perspective, how it would have to be handled).
shielded from taxation simply by moving it to another country IS a tax code designed for the digital age. A tax code that wouldn't allow taxes to be avoided that way would sound more like something for an industrial age.
What I don't understand about countries like the UK allowing this to happen is not the simple equation of lost tax revenues but the fact that a UK company that wants to compete with Apple or one of the other companies not paying taxes can't. Basically the UK is asking its companies to pay huge taxes and then compete against companies that don't.
This means that Apple can operate in most of the world's major economies without having to pay 20-40% of its profits to the governments. The local companies often do. Minimally this gives the tax avoiding companies that much more to dump into marketing, research, etc while still returning a healthy profit to their shareholders.
So when looking at the losses, the UK Germany and so on, should not just look at the lost taxes but the lost benefits of having the next Facebook, Apple, Google, etc be born in their countries. What is Google worth to the US beyond simple corporate tax revenues? I suspect that at first blush that having a Google in your country would be worth a shocking amount.
I actually like an arguement made before the Australian Royal Commission into tax avoidances many years ago. I think it was one of the Packers who said something along the lines of, "We have a moral and legal obligation to pay the government as little tax as possible. We will always pay the minimum required. If you want us to pay more tax then change the laws." (paraphrased since I can't find the actual quote).
Which is all quite true. I myself don't donate anything to the government and I do everything within my legal power to minimise the tax I pay. Corporations are no different and if you want to tax them then you need to close the loopholes that allow a company to operate in your country without paying tax. But good luck getting anyone to do that as the business groups then complain and say you'll drive away business with your "high" tax.
It would be nice if corporations actually paid tax in the country where they actually earned the money. Apple, like other giant corporates, earns billions in Australia and pays bugger all tax, carefully moving the "profit" to other low tax countries.
If the richest company in the world paid its taxes like good citizen, as I do, the world would be a better place.
Someone once said "I lik paying taxes. With taxes I buy - civilisation".
Well, if you want civilisation - pay your taxes!
"Cats like plain crisps"
that he is abusing and using to avoid taxes on.
one would consider that if the loopholes he is taking advantage on were closed, and the updates were claimed to bring it up to the digital age, he would not happily pay the taxes he's avoided so far.
And what the fuck does the asinine claim mean anyway????
The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the "digital age"
In other words, taxes are for you the industrious consumers. Now run along and play taxi with the uber we've so generously gifted you.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's the reason they run their profits through various subsiduaries in other countries. I'm sure it's entirely legal but it's hardly "political" to question their schemes or ways that can be kerbed.
Parochial political plebs complaining about corporate tax doging is "political crap", but foward thinking, progressive politicians implementing global "trade treaties" like TPP is probably "visionary leadership" or whatever in Tim's world.
We are moving into a post-Thatherite world. I don't think our way of live, most of our ways of life, will survive the Brave New World the likes of Tim Cook are building.
Corporate tax avoidance is a very big problem which is robbing citizens, but Cook should feel no shame for it. Everyone does it. Well, everything big and rich does it. It's because of the sociopath "companies are people" and "we must act in the best interests of our shareholders" mantras. If citizens do not like it, they should pressure their elected representatives to stop it, but if citizens vote for elected representatives that allow it, then those citizens deserve to be fucked over.
What The Founding Fathers Thought About Corporations http://www.addictinginfo.org/2...
10 Founding Fathers Quotes That Will Make Conservatives’ Heads Explode http://aattp.org/9-founding-fa...
What the Founding Fathers Really Thought About Corporations https://hbr.org/2010/04/what-t...
Why did our founding fathers hate corporations? http://www.justplainpolitics.c...
The IRS wants about a third of Apple's offshore cash. I think its a fair disincentive for Apple to legally and peacefully use whatever insignificant fraction of the remaining $121.9B is required for a swift corporate takeover of the United States by purchasing both the DNC and GOP outright, and from now on choosing and placing all elected officials with expensive but efficient, superslick marketing and campaigning, thus giving Apple the ability to reduce their future tax burden legally while justifying the poor investment of purchasing the entire government of a large industrialized capitalist republic.
"The current tax code was made for the industrial age, and not the "digital age,""
Yes and companies the scale of Apple are milking the discrepancy for all it is worth. Of course it is in their interests to juggle their funds around, when a 1% difference in tax margins can translate into billions of lost dividends. In an ideal world the companies would pay their fair share to individual governments based on how much was earned in a certain region. In a purely capitalist world, companies are incentivized to retain as much capital as possible. A worldwide tax code needs to arranged, every country needs to conform to it and those who don't, should be penalized. Anything else is a half measure.
Apple's tax arrangements have been in place for over 30 years, they are hardly new. It is also pays more US tax than any other company.
Essentially they have subsidiaries in low tax countries ( Ireland and Singapore) that control the buy price of the international sales in the other non-US countries their kit is sold in. This is commonly called transfer pricing.
This effectively holds international profits in low tax foreign locations.
Apple doesn't do the next logical step in financial engineering, which is to move the companies IP to a zero tax location , and license it back to the other subsidiaries , at a rate that simply transfers all profit to a zero tax location (eg Bahamas) . Many companies do take this extra step.
Part of the goal of companies in doing this is that the US is almost unique , in that it taxes the profits on foreign sales, after they have been taxed in the country of sale. Very few other countries do this. Most countries don't double tax like this.
This legal situation with US tax law encourages the kinds of thing Apple has done for over a quarter century, as well as far worse. It encourages companies to minimize tax earns in foreign countries, and minimize the fraction of profits they bring back to the US. It's an everybody loses outcome, the country stuff is sold in has its corporate income tax takings reduced, and the funds are never repatriated to the US, living in limbo offshore, reducing US government tax income as well.
If the US adopted tax law consistent with most other countries, there would not be a double taxation incentive to avoid the return of funds early on international sales to the US.
Well Tim cook would know all about crap,just like jobs,he is full of it,speaks it and makes crap devices and charges the earth for crap services. Apple are just a bunch of thieving bastards,that's why they appeal to the wealthy,they mostly got their wealth by dis-honest and like most of silicon valley,they are either now still using criminal behaviour and acts or in the past they committed criminal acts to get their start in the money grubbing ladder,where would Apple be if jobs etc had not done a very suspicous deal with someone inside rank-Xerox to steal code and ideas. What givernmentsshould do is get together and at midnight on the same day/night all around the world,they should just seize all of apes dodgy thieving bank accounts and then just spend it,by the time apple have tried to get the cash back,they will have will had to spend at least the same amount or more and govs can just refuse to pay them if they loose in courts,or just change the laws to allow them to describe Apple's hoards as criminal asserts and seize them that way,what are Apple going to do,refuse to do business in those countries ? a lot of us would love that situation,if folk really wanted their suite devices,they would have to do it through personal imports with 300% import tax,it wouldn't make Apple any more honest,but at least the public would get the use of their ill gotten gains,govs could do it to all the American firms that use Americas iffy laws that the same firms bribed politicos to enact ,as America will never change their dodgy tax system,because America would go bankrupt very quickly if all firms had to be run on an honest footing by honest ceo's etc etc,but having the most corrupt system and population in the world,it will never happen.another world problem caused by the most immoral,criminal, under educated ,arrogant,parochial population that the rest of us have had to suffer from in the last 2000 years,but at least the Romans didn't hide behind all sorts of crap,they were honest UN their theft and war mongering,I'm 57,luveun the UK and am still waiting to meet my first hinest,non criminal American,even the nice old elderly coupes I used to serve in hotels,if you got to talk with them,had all got their wealth by dishonest or criminal ir immoral behaviour somewhere in their past,but then greed is a central part of their bullshit constitution ...
The US government is an extension of its corporate paymasters. Do you really expect the ordinary workers to benefit from corporate profiteering.
What you need in the United States, is to progress towards becoming a democracy, where there is a balance between corporate power, and nationalised services, like public healthcare, energy, transport, water, and where workers are stakeholders in ownership of the means of production. Your current economic model is quite obviously on the verge of total collapse.
I would do the same thing if there was no way to repatriate the money without avoiding a huge tax hit. It's common sense.
The tax code is to blame in this case. The same tax code that makes sure you get the shaft if you make a living earning a salary.
A citizen of the free world, or a corporation therein (being a legal, voluntary assembly of free persons) has the duty to avoid paying taxes within the constraints of law. Taxation increase the power of governments, and it is the citizen's obligation to limit the government's ability of interfering with our lives and commerce. Deciding not to pay the British Crown was what baptized the birth of America, and this spirit of free entrepreneurship is the mental blessing that has been keeping the Western world alive and great.
By making the law on taxation, the people has already decided what is just and what is tax cheating. Apple, like other honest corporations, is just following the law. They're acting in agreement with the will of the people.
Some people actually seem to believe that "Corporations run at whatever profit, period", and would like to imply that those corporations owe nothing to the society they are based in.
Of course that's total nonsense as a moment's reflection will show.
Corporations aren't islands. They are built on a solid foundation provided by society, embedded in that society, fed and protected by that society. In Apple's case that would be the US. They owe that society for all the things they cannot do or provide for themselves but are only too happy to take for granted.
An educated workforce, the ideas that they built their business on (more often than not based on government or semi-government research at some stage), a legal system that grants them all kinds of rights (contract rights, property rights, copyrights, patents) and protects them if and when those rights are infringed on (both nationally and internationally), a huge part of their market (no company can exist without clients affluent enough to purchase its products/services), a culture in which their products are valued (what's Apple's market share in India?), an ecosystem of suppliers and service-providers, a reliable currency, network and communication infrastructure, roads, ports, transport, housing for its operations and its workforce, etc. etc..
The bill that society at large presents to them for all that vital infrastructure is known as "Tax". And, companies being companies, would rather minimize that bill any way they can.
CEO's for example are paid to help their company increase its revenue and reduce expense. The issue of what's fair or reasonable never even comes up. Any anything that increases profitability (and doesn't result in said CEO being convicted and/or jailed) goes. Companies have no responsibility for anything whatsoever except their bottom line. Of course they understand that they can't do without the society they are rooted in. Only, as with any supplier, they try to talk the price down. Even if that hurts the society they are so busy benefiting from. That doesn't make them "immoral", but it does make them firmly "a-moral".
It is in that light that we should view their comments about "Tax being just political bs.". It's their job to say that; it's in their interest to say that; they're paid to say that. So that's what they say. They might even believe that (a job requirement perhaps?). They couldn't be less concerned with considerations as to whether that's true, reasonable, or fair.
The sad and risible fact is that there still are Americans (not being CEO's) who haven't spotted these simple facts and actually lend credence to rah-rah-taxes-are-a-waste sloganeering.
Another case of foolish talk from Tim Cook. Apple needs a new CEO.
There have been other seriously bad communications errors at Apple since Tim Cook has been in charge. Apparently, even though Tim Cook worked with Steve Jobs for years, Mr. Cook did not learn about marketing communication from Mr. Jobs.
Agreeing with Tim Cook about tax law is not a reason to disagree with what I said. The problem is the lack of sophistication in his comments.
Apple have $59.2 of tax money, owed to the government, locked away in their offshore bank account? Ok.... Then why doesn't the government just print / reissue that money? - Would it really make any economic difference, if apple paid the tax they owe, or the government just reprints it? A dollar is a dollar whatever way it gets produced! Then if apple do one day pay up, then just destroy the money they give back. Why is this such a problem?
he supports redistributionist policies and higher taxes on middle America and then insists that HE and HIS business should not be the ones to pay for it. This is Standard Operating Procedure for all the crypto-socialists of the left from George Soros, and Warren Buffet and Bill Gates to Zuckerberg and Cook. They get public adoration from the stupid by pretending to want everybody taken care of in the warm fuzzy embrace of generous socialist benefits BUT the hide all THEIR resources from the system and insist on not paying..... so the burden will fall entirely on the middle class taxpayers and since that will never be enough, the benefits available to the poor can never be as good as promised. When these leftists DO supposedly spend money "for the good of others" what they ACTUALLY do is setup other businesses that let THEM control how and where and on WHAT the money is spent - so really it's just them keeping the money and spending it as they please on a hobby/PR activity.
Proponents of socialism usually claim it WOULD work if "properly done" by the "right people" - but such perfect people do not exist. The reason it always fails to perform as promised is that there are no perfect, incorruptible, selfless human beings. The reason free market capitalism excels at what it does, and yes also fails to be perfect, is that it is designed to work using the inherent self-interests of all parties involved and is thus more-aligned with reality.
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher
"Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it." - Ronald Reagan
The core problem is taxing on the fiction that are profits. The unsavory bit is Apple maintaining at least one corporate entity that has no country of domicile, and passing cost allocations around between operating subsidiaries to take their effective tax rate to punitive rates in countries where their revenue comes from. There are similar fictional cost allocations in car manufacturing and in FMCG markets (eg: Nestle borrowing money from another subsidiary at well above banking industry interest rates, or coffee outlets paying external entities for brand licensing). There's also strange patterns on how some online vendors allocate R&D costs almost in sync with their gross profits. The overall effective tax income from multinational companies has trended down relentlessly for 40 years in the West. The first core issue is how aggressively companies use fictional instruments and stooge third-rate economies to distort the tax paid away from the economies that provide their revenue. The solution is to impose tax rates based on local revenue, not fictional profits. If they do pay tax equitably, then the second core issue is how they repatriate income to the parent company's home geography. That's something for the US Govt alone.
I agree with Tim. There is "political crap" going on alright. It's our own damn government taking bribes in exchange for tax loopholes to allow this kind of shit to happen in the first place.
It's easy for our own government to make this kind of activity illegal. It's impossible for them to actually do it, which goes to show anyone and everyone who is truly in control of our government, and has been for a very long time.
And it will remain that way until someone makes lobbying our government illegal. Fat chance of that. Remember who's in control here.
socialism does not work because it's been tried on too small a scale, but it will be really cool if we subjugate the whole planet under it???
You apparently do not believe in engineering and the whole concept of "models" (not the fashion sort, but the engineering and science variety). The entire basis for a lot of science and engineering is that you can test a big system by building a smaller model and then testing and proving a theory on that smaller model. This concept means that if you make a model of a plane or a ship etc and the model fails, then you do not waste the time and resources building the big one because you already know the full-scale one will not work. The principle also works in the reverse direction: You can observe a big system, then build a small model of it and tinker with that model rather than the big system in order to understand the big system, with the accuracy of the understanding being proportional to the fidelity of the model.
If socialism fails at the state level, then trying it at a national level is a bad idea. If socialism fails at the national level, then trying it at the global level would be criminally insane. The original English colonists in the US, the Pilgrims, tried socialism when they first arrived on the continent. They were very religious and idealistic and had all signed a pledge to share all their resources equally, while each worked to his/her maximum. They were Marxists 200 years before Karl Marx was born. This failed and they nearly died from starvation. Their experiment in selflessness, even among people far more pious than the average modern American, FAILED. They abandoned that experiment and allowed each person to own property and sell the their labor and products and keep their profits and the resulting economic model became what we inherited in the US. This was the original economic experimental model in the US.
Do you think that Tim Cook and all his left-leaning friends have been voting for small-government, simple flat-tax, TEA Party style politicians, or for huge government with phoney soak-the-rich taxes that have huge loopholes style politicians?
All those massive screwed-up thousands-of-pages-long complex tax laws (with lots of obscure loopholes that can only be found and used by rich guys with full-time lawyers and accountants) are there because special interests and their lobbyists PAID big-government politicians to write them that way. Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc been very generous for decades to liberal Democrats who have built all this in years when they had the power to, and kept it from shrinking in the years when they had less power. Not one of these guys who pretend they'd be happy to pay their taxes if the tax code was ever simplified has ever spent one penny on a TEA Party candidate, and none even wants to be seen in the same room with a conservative.
When you FUND and SUPPORT the politicians who build the tax code the way it is, it becomes completely dishonest to then pretend that it's not your fault that the tax code has the loopholes you are using and then when you use those loopholes (which you indirectly created and made available only to you and your pals) you re "just obeying the laws other people wrote".
Taxing them more simply means higher prices for all the customers. That would be us, not them.
Apple is already charging their costumers for literally and figuratively imaginary properties of its products.
They are charging customers for the Apple IMAGE.
To the people who are image shopping increase of price means diddly squat.
Or they are not really serious about keeping up their image of whatever Apple products mean out there.
Cool? Hip? Creative? Expensive? Better than others?
So... Making Apple pay what they owe would either have no effect on their sales - or Apple would suddenly stop being cool and only SERIOUS Apple users who really know how to appreciate Apple products would buy Apple once again.
Which only leaves the question of are "you" a serious Apple user who doesn't mind a paltry increase in price - or are you just a hipster, trying to be cool?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
When the founders of the United States designed the system, there WAS no tax on the individual. No federal income tax. No federal property tax. Zip. Zilch.
Many of the founders were engineering sorts, entrepreneurs, inventors, tradesmen, etc and they DESIGNED the United States, making many tradeoffs and design choices based on the studies they had made of previous nations and civilizations. The Constitution of The United States is NOT some dusty quasi-religious text, it is the design document. It's the Blue prints, and Specs.
They designed the Federal Government to be funded on tariffs applied to imports. The average American who consumed American natural resources and used American labor paid NOTHING. If somebody wanted something more exotic made from imported materials, then he paid a tariff on the imported materials. If somebody richer wanted something more exotic manufactured from outside the US he paid much more. This meant several things:
1. The people were encouraged to hire their fellow Americans.
2. The people were encouraged to locate, obtain, and take advantage of local resources (which also encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship)
3. The rich bore most of the burdens of the Federal government.
4. Federal funding, which supported the diplomats and the military, scaled directly with the degree of America's foreign entanglements.
The demands of the Civil War drove some drift away from this, but it was the original "Progressive" Woodrow Wilson (D-VA) who started the shift to a Federal income tax (he is also the guy who segregated the federal government by skin color) for World War I. By the end of World War II, the corporatists and Wall St bankers introduced the fallacious claim that tariffs (in the form of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930) had caused WWII. This is a pretense based on the lie that Japan and Germany had no desires on the lands and resources of their neighbors and only went to war over the tariff. Ever since WWII, the rich investment banker class has been pushing to shift all taxation away fro m the tariffs which THEY pay and onto the average middle class person who benefits less from cheap imports than he suffers from suppressed wages and benefits.
People are currently being encouraged to be outraged by the post-modern "tax inversions" which happen when a corporation moves its headquarters from the US to some other lower-cost place, but the REAL tax inversion happened long ago, and the public is not supposed to look at THAT one and is supposed to be educated and propagandized to pretend that the first 150 years of America never happened and that the original policies the nation was DESIGNED to have are not workable. We are (insanely) supposed to believe that the policies our founder gave us would,, if embraced, lead to the sorts of wars we only had AFTER we abandoned those policies!
.
Calling them out on it is not political crap. Calling it political crap is a diversionary tactic used in an attempt to change the topic of conversation.
Apple didn't move that money to another country - they MADE that money there.
You're just pissed the US tax code doesn't force them to move the money here. For great social justice, or whatever.
because of the money that is used to buy politicians/elections. When it becomes cheaper to buy a politician than to pay the tax, you buy the politician. Don't expect to see any changes that result in more tax revenues coming in from corporations or very rich people any time soon. If someone succeeds in increasing tax revenues it will come at the expense of people who work for a living, because they have no say whatsoever in what their government does.
Their R&D is overseas, their manufacturing is overseas, their money is overseas.
There is nothing American about these companies. They are -not- american companies.
Maybe the used to be... but not anymore.
just keep buying iphones every year lol...
Silicon Valley's sense of superiority and entitlement are crap. Gotta go against Tim on this one, he's just not making sense. :/
Shaming capitalism and the rich for the progressive mob's consumption is called 'Monday through Friday' for mainstream media, even the "venerable" 60 Minutes. The only difference is the target is one of their own...he probably expected a pass or kid gloves. You shouldn't trust a starving dog.
Calling it "political crap" is just snark that reinforces the arrogance of Apple.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
They are not U.S. profits. The U.S. has no right to tax them uuntil and unless Apple does something stupid, and converts them into U.S. profits.
Then the U.S. would have no problem assessing a tariff to offset (and possibly penalize) such re-domiciled U.S. profits.
Like Steve Jobs told Obama in Feb 2011, when Obama asked what it would take to manufacture Apple products in the U.S. ("Why can’t that work come home?") -- the answer is: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
Crank up the pain high enough and they will. Then again, I don't think either of them like America enough to see it prosper.
“Our economy is in deep trouble,” said billionaire and self-professed Fabulist Jeff Greene in an interview yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We’ve had a realistic level of job destruction, and those jobs aren’t coming back.”
What says they cant, even under the weight of a hyperpower like the US? If anything, the Davos folks like Greene are the kind that hate Americans and would do anything to destroy the country.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
After all Tim calls the shots not congress they allow a 1.9% tax rate for the biggest cash cow yet. You pay higher taxes in sales tax alone. What do you think or do you think? I guess you vote because if you donâ(TM)t this does not concern you.
Well said. The CEO of one of the world's most visible companies should know better than to treat the politicians of his country with contempt.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
There is a huge tax problem in the US. There is an 80,000 page tax code, where 79,500(1) are favoritism, cronyism, and the results of bribery. Yeah, Apple should probably be paying more, but given the current tax code they are working within the law. You don't have to like it, but if that was not the case people would be in jail for tax evasion (especially given the amount of money we are discussing).
Not only does all this favoritism mean that companies like Apple legally pay a fraction of what small businesses pay, but there is something worse afoot. Namely, that there is a massive economy built on top of this pile of corruption. I laugh when I hear people talk about flat tax or "fixing" the tax code because they ignore that the US has at least 50Billion dollars a year relying on our current corrupt tax system.
A flat tax, or even corrections to make the tax code fair, are going to put massive numbers of CPAs, Attorneys, and Accountants out of work. The few people leaving from the IRS that you hear about on rare occasions is quite frankly peanuts. Where does everyone employed by H&R Block, Quickbooks, Kiplingers, and thousands of Law firms work if we fix the tax code? Those are some high paying jobs too, so lots of middle class income requires them to be there or they take a massive hit as well.
While I absolutely want fairness, if shitty laws are on the books why is it wrong to follow the law exactly? We need to fix it, but it's not like waving a magic wand or voting for "that guy/gal" will fix the problems. I'll get off my soap box.
(1) Giving 500 pages for title, cover page, index, and boasting by writers
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Cook has no where to hide.
Ha ha
Tim Crook is political crap
The US should give up and admit that it cannot effectively tax the the corporations that have grown from it and instead of taxing profits tax where the money flows to. That is remove capital gains tax as well because now all of that would count as normal income subject to the standard laws governing that. Generally individuals are far less able to get sweet heart tax laws passed making their tax burdens minuscule. So while some super wealthy individuals will still manage to avoid taxes as a general rule more taxes will be paid. This would also dramatically reduce our tax code, remove government subsidies (i.e. tax breaks) for specific businesses, and level the playing field for smaller business who have yet to have setup their own tax avoidance systems.
Simply put, just like Donald T. RUMP who was crying about the same thing, your only problem is that you are uun-American.
Even jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
Apple has benefited from the American way more than any other crap factory. You make garbage, you can command a high price because our government protects your monopoly.
Pay your damn taxes and stop crying.
.... uh oh, colliding leftist hipster priorities!
Their mindless love of Apple is well known ... and the CEO is even differently attracted, oh joy!
But ... dodging taxes? Horrifying! Does not compute ... head must explode like a 1960's sci fi robot trapped in a contradiction ...
Here are some basic points so you can start to get some idea of how stocks actually work. Feel free to ignore reality of you'd rather play make-believe with that Occupy guy you heard, who has never owned a stock or any other investment and has no idea what he's talking about.
Stock is ownership of a company. If you buy some shares of IBM or Texaco, you become an owner of those companies. It allows anyone, you or me, to own a big company through cooperative ownership. When IBM makes money, the owners (shareholders) make money. They are typically paod four times per year. The payments to owners (stock holders) are called dividends because it's the available excess cash DIVIDED between the stock holders.
If you want to share in company profits, you can buy a stock, but there's a better way. If you bought IBM stock, you only make money if IBM makes money. To be fairly sure you'll make money, you can cooperate with other savers to pool your money and get stocks in lots and lots of different companies. That's called a mutual fund. The simplest, safest kind which owns money-making stocks like IBM and General Mills is called a "value index fund".
Besides value stocks, the other kind is called a growth stock. These are less mature companies which are still growing quickly. They don't have excess cash to pay owners with because they're using their cash to build fiber networks, new factories, or whatever they need to grow. Whenever they need more money in order to grow more, they can issue more stock. Savers buy the new stock and the company then has money to build the new facility. Because immature (growth) companies don't have extra cash, but are getting more valuable, indeed you -could- later sell your stock and it should be more valuable. Or by the time you retire, the company may have matured, stopped growing quickly and started paying dividends. I say "by the time you retire" because that's the #1 use of stocks- investing in becoming an owner now (stocks) is how you avoid having to work for those companies when you're 80. Three groups of people get paid - employees, owners, and politicians. Becoming an owner, $250 at a time, is how you eventually stop being an employee.
Referring back to what you said and applying some new knowledge, we see there are basically two kinds of stocks. With mature companies, the company pays the stockholder. With growth companies, the company gets money from selling stocks as needed, while stockholders become owners of a growing company.
PS: Yes you -can- trade pork bellies, bushels of wheat, barrels of oil, or stocks. That can make sense for companies who need to know how much wheat will cost them, but trading isn't the main point of these things. Pork and wheat are to eat, oil provides power (including gas), and stocks let anyone with $250 become a business owner if they choose to.
Yep.
Tim is absolutely right.
The tax code is antiquated and not suitable for the digital age... in the same way that schools and hospitals are not suited for the digital age.
They were a selfish inefficiency that arose from the industrial age and really need to be abolished.
Then they will have to spend more on defence and charge more tax
So if I buy a share of apple stock, I can go walking anywhere in any apple holding? I'm an owner after all!
You seem to be admitting just how messed up our government has become, getting involved in TONS of stuff it's not supposed to be involved in and not doing ANY of it well, and then you conclude that the problem is the Constitution rather than all the abuses of it. The Constitution is NOT a religious document, but it is the design spec for the best nation that ever existed, and since many of the people who live here love this place, we're not willing to part with it.
If you want to live somewhere where that pesky dusty old Constitution does not apply, then kindly move to such a place - the plant is COVERED with such nations. Don't work to screw up the only country that has our Constitution, those of us who support it do not intend to surrender it - not EVER, and not for any price.
Oh, and the US is NOT a Democracy, no matter how many times sloppy politicians during WWII and the Cold War called it that as a shorter form of "constitutional republic with democratic elections". Democracy is little different from mob rule, and is a form of government our founders explicitly ruled out after observing that all democracies fail. The results of any democracy are the same as the results of total anarchy and mob rule; the majority gets its way. So-called "progressives" have always wanted democracy and always complain that the Constitution is an obstruction, but that's precisely its job! The Constitution says that the majority DOES NOT always get its way - there are some things given to man by God that no majority has the right to infringe upon.
Al Capone "claimed" he owed no tax because he had "no" money.
Tim Cook claims he and Apple own no tax because this is the "digital age."
As Mr. Capone spent many years in prison for tax evasion, Mr. Cook can enjoy the same comforts of prison for tax evasion in his "digital age."
Ha ha
You are an idiot.
In any case of buying stocks or mutual funds you are not investing into the business the company is doing.
You are making a bet on how the shares will perform on the stock market.
Thank you however, good Sir, for your attemot to enlighten me. That is always welcome.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
See, we have several posts about how Apple is a company, and like all companies, they want to avoid taxes. What makes this different is that Apple is so, so very....sanctimonious. They are in your face about social policies and other "liberal" issues. But, when it comes to paying or inconveniencing their business model, they seem to not be for all the stuff they advocate. With treasure on the line, they never, ever seem to do the right thing.
For example:
APPLE: Look at us, we are GREEN! Except, hey, lets not allow you to upgrade memory in an iMac so it it can be used for a few more years. Because there is NOTHING toxic in the process of the deposition processes to make micro-electronics, right?
To me, this hypocrisy makes them far worse than "unenlightened" companies that just flat out say, hey, we are in it for profit. With them, you can encourage change. But, when you hide behind the cloak of caring, it is far harder because few see the issues.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
The CEO of a major consumer-products company said a swear word! In public! Where underaged users of his company's products could read it!
Actually, is 'crap' still considered a swear word?
Your points would be fantastic, if any of them were true: 1. I live amongst more educated people: While many in California feel you are better than everyone else, the rankings say...not so much. Tenth worst, actually.
http://247wallst.com/special-r...
2. Most welfare mouths are in the midwest: Here is a list of the states with most welfare population compared to working population. 1. Ca 2. NM 3. HI 4. MI 5. Al 6. SC 7. IL 8. KT 9. Oh 10. NY. Now, two of those are midwest, and because IL and OH enjoy large, urban centers.
http://brandongaille.com/welfa...
3. Most are white: Slightly more welfare recipients are black compared to white (39.8 vs. 38.8) but, black people make up 13% and white are about 63 percent, to say most are white is such a torture of reality it borders on a sickness.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/...
4. The one you did get right is that most welfare people did not finish school. However, when you look at graduation rates, places that I am fairly sure you would say are "educated" i.e. coastal meccas, are not exactly nation beaters. Ca is middle at best and New York is near the bottom. Br> https://www.washingtonpost.com...
I know making such statements are cool in some circles, but facts and links make for stronger arguments, better policy, and more honest discussion. You simply can not fix problems without this. I for one, want to fix issues, not play blame games.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Man who profits from tax loophole calls media spotlight on tax loophole abusers "political crap."
Just remember folks. Corporations who overcharge for their product, then don't pay taxes means that YOU, the citizen, get to pickup the tab. Don't support bullcrap companies who offshore their tax obligations.
If there was the political balls (or willingness to bite the hand that feeds them $$$)
Make corporations pay the GREATER of:
1. The tax due based on their "profits" (after shifting profits all over the world to avoid paying)
2. A flat tax of 0.001% of GROSS REVENUE generated in the country. Note: this is the sales amount, so can't even use cost of goods to manipulate the figure.
And the biggest opposition would be taxing revenue isn't fair, people might operate on thin margins and volume. I would counter there is no business that would go bankrupt by passing this % cost increase on to consumers, but at least then the tax is generated and stays in the country where the outflow occurred.
Yes one thousandth of one percent is a small amount but it is better than the $0 (or even tax credit) that some companies have now.
Why should apple pay taxes on money made in another country?
I really don't understand why they should have to.
So if all these Apple products manufactured in China and 2/3 sold to countries other than US, and ship carrying containers filled with Apple products (ship flagged to some country most don't know about). Let's suppose ship is hijacked at high seas or being threatened by some other country's navy. And if they call for help from the world's greatest naval power the US Navy (funded by tax dollars which much doesn't come from Apple), should the Navy respond or say "sorry, out of our jurisdiction" or they will respond anyway as iPhones are considered essential strategic resource that lack of can cripple the world's economy. And Navy will have to respond because US is the "world's policemen?"
Just asking.
mfwright@batnet.com
I was amused how Tim Cook said with a straight face Apple pays all taxes due. His comment of tax code was written for Industrial Age, not Digital Age, which implied "we are happy to pay more taxes but it's not our fault the tax code written that way." I was thinking when Steve Jobs testified to congress importance of STEM in schools.
Cook also commented reason they ship manufacturing to China is they have more skilled labor. He explained further US removed many vocational training in schools. I was thinking back in the days when high schools had lots of vocational training and there were several groups that advocated this was to fast track the poor kids into these low pay and hard labor, while privileged kids were able to attend college. So it seemed they restructured so everyone goes to college. Meanwhile we see many have the college degrees and a mountain of debt.
Maybe vocational and trade skills are not so bad after all. Someone who really knows how to diagnose a problem in a car, or locate a fault in a building's HVAC system going haywire is a very valuable person that can demand a good wage.
mfwright@batnet.com
I think the people who crow the most and have the most opinions to share are the same people who know the least. I wonder if they comprehend what it means when I inform them that I, personally, own two *thousand* Tesla shares. Note the comment about not being able to get Apple devices or go in the stores as they wish. Well, if they had enough shares they'd sure as hell be able to work some sort of deal out if they wanted. Major shareholders get some pretty decent influence *if* they want to exercise it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Part of the goal of companies in doing this is that the US is almost unique , in that it taxes the profits on foreign sales, after they have been taxed in the country of sale. Very few other countries do this. Most countries don't double tax like this.
The US is simply asking for the entire tax to be paid - if the money is made in foreign lands and stays there... fine. If it is made in foreign lands and imported, then if that tax (say 10% in China or something) would be deducted from the standard 35% corporate tax that the US levies.
So it's a tax-equalization. Any US expat knows this - it's the same for income tax, but even worse - you have to pay US taxes even if you're not on US soil or repatriated it (essentially the US thinks you'll just gift it to family or something - which makes sense given gift taxes only kick in at large dollar values).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Not if you're buying a dividend stock.
Shut the fuck up, you faggot!
In any case of buying stocks or mutual funds you are not investing into the business the company is doing.
If you did that, you'd be competing with your own investment.
You are making a bet on how the shares will perform on the stock market.
Pretty much, and that's called investing. You don't believe in that definition, I know, but lmgtfy:
invest
invest/Submit
verb
gerund or present participle: investing
1. expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture.
Other than Bernie Sanders pointing out the glaringly obvious (and thus, being assiduously marginalized by corporate-owned media), who the eff is having a 'debate' about stopping democracy-destroying corporate tax dodges?
I'm surprised the entire debate here is about tax, and everyone overlooked the bit slipped in at the end:
"Rose interviewed Cook before last month's terror attacks in Paris, in which the attackers used encrypted messages to communicate with each other. "
They're still pushing that lie in every place they can, when everyone now knows they were sending normal text messages.
> you're making a bet on how the shares will perform in the market
Again, that's true only for newer companies, called "growth stocks". With these new companies, you are expecting that they'll grow larger and therefore be worth more. That's not most companies. Most publicly held companies are mature companies which are no longer growing quickly. Companies like Proctor & Gamble, Texaco, General Motors, Boeing, etc aren't growing quickly, so owners (shareholders) aren't expecting that. Rather, shareholders get paid cash dividends every quarter, sharing in company's profit. These mature companies are steady sources of income. That's boring compared to "the hottest new company", so you don't hear about them as much, but most public companies aren't new. Most are boring old dividend producers. Investors are interested in the cash dividends, not growth of the company and therefore the stock price. Again, dividends are simply cash paid to stockholders, the profits are DIVIDED among the owners (stockholders). That's how money is made with most stocks (companies).
> you are not investing into the business the company is doing.
> You are making a bet on how the shares will perform on the stock market.
Guess what causes the value of a growth stock to increase? When the company's business increases, of course! Obviously you don't think that people are willing to pay more for a piece when a company is doing WORSE. Of course it's when the company's business is doing WELL that people want to own that company and therefore the stock price increases. Expecting that the company will grow, and the value of the stock will go up, IS expecting that the business will do well. It's two ways of saying the same thing, my friend.
But again, that's only growth stocks where investors are mainly focused on stock price, which is the minority of companies. Most companies are producing profits (dividends) , not growth. In this more common case, you're simply investing in companies which you believe will continue to make money. When the company makes money, the send some of that money to each shareholder.
I'm being a bit dogged in explaining this because it's -important- to understand. This kind of knowledge how you end up owning your house rather than paying rent to someone who does know. The difference between -complaining- about "the man" doing well vs doing well yourself, watching your own Scottrade account grow from $250 to $5,000, then $10,000, then $20,000, buying a house with that, and eventually retiring with a million plus.
A lot of people almost don't want to understand finances for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of scary terms they don't understand, like "rolling equity", and they end up choosing to be angry that "the man" is doing well rather than doing wel themselves. Your landlord is a dude just like you, possibly a bit of a nerd. He or she just did two things - spent a few hours learning some basics about finances, and put some money into savings each month BEFORE buying anything with his paycheck. MOST millionaires made less than $100,000/year and they aren't Wall Street finance majors. They did very simple things, which are low risk, like starting with $250 invested in an index mutual fund via Scottrade or eTrade. It doesn't have to be complicated. For low risk, you want an index fund with fees below 0.5%, like IVE. When you buy IVE, you're buying perhaps a hundred companies which are fairly steady, not exciting growth companies, but mature companies which will pay you dividends.
... and probably worse due to their hypocritical stance regarding escaping paying US taxes.
But, with the penalties imposed on business in the US, who can blame them?
They have already paid the tax where they earned the money.
This is just a case of "that guy has it and we want it, lets take it."
It doesn't matter what the law says. They feel that its just not fair
so they should be able to take it.
It's OK if the company gives money to Barack Obama.
...
...
Which Apple did, btw.
Someone bring Dan Rather back to CBS
We can't go after the Republican companies like Chick Filet, Murdoch Inc, and Duck Dynasty until they start tax inversioning
Fire the Queer and send him personna non grata to Thailand.
Haha
"if it tried to bring the money back to the U.S." Until it does so, this issue *IS* bullshit.
They would pay taxes on monies that are repatriated to China, just like US corporations pay tax on dollars that they repatriate to the US.
Which, by the way, is why companies don't do that, and just keep the money 'off-shore' and continue to ask the Congress to enact a reduced repatriation tax holiday.
If they'd do it, Apple, Google, Cisco, et al. would be more than happy to pay several hundred million in taxes in order to get the billions back here. The US Government would get a nice windfall to waste on the usual pork and bullshit.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You are not listening.
And thanx for your unneeded advice:
there is a difference between and "investment" and "placing funds" or "placing money with a bank".
People here on /. believe if they buy stock of a solar company, they are investing into solar power (and the money is used to build more plants). However they are only betting on how good the companies shares are performing at the stock market.
I don't invest money at a 0.5% "probably" return. I just spent it for stuff that I have fun in ... like my next sailing boat.
But again: thanx for your not needed, and also not really welcome, advice ;D
There are a lot of scary terms they don't understand, like "rolling equity" ...
Of course I don't understand them. They are special english. The terms you use for describing something can not be literally translated into german. Because we have regarding money and investments completely different terminologies. So any advice of you would require me to spend a month on reading literature to even grasp it. The only thing that translated easy was "index fund"
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Buying solar company stock is going to make that stock slightly more valuable, and there are some benefits for the company. It makes hostile takeovers harder, means an issue of more stock will get more, and I believe has some effect on credit. It doesn't do much for the company, but it does a bit.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
His answer is "Because, internet?'
Same old story: Old dude keeping his money.
It's more like "If it was worth what they are already charging for it they'd be charging more."
Along with "There is no practical reason why would anyone need an Apple device or to pay an Apple price."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens