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Apple Should Pay More Tax, Says Co-Founder Wozniak (bbc.com)
mrspoonsi quotes a report from BCC: All companies, including Apple, should pay a 50% tax rate, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has told the BBC. He said he doesn't like the idea that Apple does not pay tax at the same rate he does personally. "I don't like the idea that Apple might be unfair -- not paying taxes the way I do as a person. I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50% of anything I make in taxes and I believe that's part of life and you should do it." When asked if Apple should pay that amount, he replied: "Every company in the world should." He said he was never interested in money, unlike his former partner Steve Jobs. "Steve Jobs started Apple Computers for money, that was his big thing and that was extremely important and critical and good." Three years ago the company admitted two of its Irish subsidiaries pay a rate of 2%. It has built up offshore cash reserves of around $200 billion -- beyond the reach of U.S. tax officials. In a CBS '60 Minutes' episode, Apple CEO Steve Cook dismissed as "total political crap" the notion that the tech giant was avoiding taxes. And on a semi-related note, presidential candidate Donald Trump said in January he'd like to make Apple "start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of other countries." He said he would impose a 35% business tax on American business manufacturing outside of the U.S if elected president.
Selective taxes are why we are in the hole we are in. If Waz want's to donate, there is an easy way for him to do just that.
Always easy to give away other people's money...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Congress, collectively, should get off its ass (which is being incentivized to do nothing by corporate money), and reform the tax codes with a renewed and vigorous sense of public duty. Public duty to the country, people, and public good -- not their select few lobbied corporations who don't represent the majority of companies and people who are willing to pay their taxes fairly and fully if they can see that others are doing the same.
And stop picking on Apple. Though I'm no fanboy, Apple is just one symptom of the problem. Punishing Apple isn't going to fix the 10,000 other companies that do what they do. Reform the system in general, not prune/pluck at 1-2 examples.
I would bet that in closed doors, CEOs of many companies would tell Congress to fix the damn system and make us pay more tax, if everyone were forced to follow the same rules. Stop the leakage and loopholes that are benefitting only those who are rich enough to afford the lawyers and accountants who are smart at shifting money around...
If the Woz is paying 50% in taxes, he's doing his finances wrong. Earned income is taxed at the highest rate. Portfolio and passive income is taxed a lower rate. He needs to convert his earned income into portfolio and/or passive income. The less earned income he has, the less in taxes he will pay.
>Donald Trump said in January he'd like to make Apple "start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of other countries." He said he would impose a 35% business tax on American business manufacturing outside of the U.S if elected president.
And if Tim Cook and other CEO's resist, they go up against THE WALL.
All they do is pass along the cost of the taxes they're paying to the consumer. In the end, all taxes are paid by individuals, whether directly or hidden in the cost of the products and services they buy.
Do you actually think that Apple wouldn't simply raise their prices so that their profit margin stayed the same? In what world?
I think you mean Apple CEO Tim Cook
But, that is the problem - 34,000 pages of tax code specifically lead to all the issues. We need a tax code that has no social engineering and no exemptions.
If the government wants to encourage development of Solar Cells, they should grant money to that industry as a separate bill - all by itself.
The Tax system should not be polluted with all the 34,000 pages of BS.
We can debate all you want about progressive vs flat vs whatever, but if it can't be describe on one 8 1/2 x 11 hand written paper, then it is too complex.
Nobody should be required to pay half or more of their income to a government. If a person/company wants to do that on their own, then that is their choice. But there's no way anyone can convince me that someone else deserves half or more of the fruits of my labor. And in fact, I think the top rate should be close to 25% with no deductions.
And surely Woz is smart enough to know that if tax rates are increased for companies that it will only raise the prices of their goods and services. Companies can't and won't absorb that cost of doing business.
This is not in defense of Apple. I don't care for them.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The problem with forcing multinationals to pay more taxes on the profits they make in the US is they will simply sell all their products to a division in the country with the lowest tax rates at cost, do all the mark-up there, then sell them back at cost to the US division. No profits on the books in the US means they still pay zero in US taxes. With digital media, it's even easier, since bits can be shipped anywhere in the world instantaneously. Before you raise the tax rates, you need to fix the tax laws.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How about we raise the minimum wage to $100/hour and make everybody in the country rich too, while we're at it? Revenue to provide services needs to come from somewhere. Our current system appears to be built on the assumption that tax revenue should all come from personal income and value added (sales) tax, since actually taxing multinational corporations just makes them declare all their profits in another country with a lower tax rate. Who should be taxed and at what rate is a debate we need to have, but solutions should be based on evidence, not ideology or (as in the case of many candidates) bribery.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is this a 50% tax on profits, or gross revenues?
In either case, I think a 50% tax makes many businesses not viable. Across the US we have huge unemployment issues, and many young people are unemployed. This is a negative situation, and is putting the social safety net at risk. Companies move where the taxes are lowest.
It appears that many small businesses pay much more in taxes than do the large multinationals employing the double irish with a dutch sandwich
Furthermore, the US already has worldwide taxation that leads to double taxation, whereas most countries utilize a territorial taxation system. Worldwide taxation leads to companies keeping their earnings abroad to mitigate the double tax when they return them to the US
High taxes, unemployment, and high welfare can create perverse incentives for people needing income.
I don't think a 50% tax is going to solve any of those problems.
In summary:
We need tax reform
We need territorial taxation
We need to address taxation for smaller businesses
We need something like basic income that is more equitable
I'm pretty sure that the reason people loath Trump is because of everything else he says. Even an untrained monkey will pick the right door every once in a while.
Is it contagious?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Apple doesn't make the rules, but they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to use the rules to maximum net profits. If you don't think Apple is paying enough, change the rules to make all companies pay more, e.g. by eliminating R&D expense deductions.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Time for Mr. Trump to take an 8th Grade civics course. He cannot levy taxes by executive fiat. It's a power directly denied to him by the Constitution. And there's no fucking way he'll be able to get Congress to do it.
Why is anyone even listening to this Dorito-tinted muppet when he says things like this?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
A far more sensible reform is to eliminate taxation of public corporations and tax capital gains like ordinary income. Let the really rich pay taxes just like a successful doctor, lawyer, or small business owner does.
Well, that's what countries like Canada and EU members do: they have lower corporate taxes, much higher VAT taxes (=highly regressive), and comparable income taxes on the rich. For some reason, progressives in the US don't like to talk about that and instead present a fiction of Europe that has nothing to do with reality.
The evidence is quite clear: taxing high income earners or corporations doesn't work well because they don't actually have that much money in aggregate, and they just move elsewhere or retire. If you want high taxes to pay for an extensive welfare state, you have to tax the lower and middle classes. Europe figured that out. US politicians seem a little slow.
Because most people think that the president decides everything.
I recently require the rules and regulations of my hoa, which has 15 units. It came out to 8 pages. This document is only 1 in the the 4 documents required (declaration, by laws, articles of incorporation and regulations). The declaration is 80 pages long. Again, all this for a15 unit community.
Why would you ever think that something as complex as taxes could ever be described in 1 page? I agree that 10s of thousands of pages is a bit excessive and should be simplified, by the way. However, anyone that says they can get it under 1,000 pages is either ignorant, delusional or just plain malicious.
Family before countrymen. Countrymen before strangers. Tribalism is human and if you think you don't participate in it your kidding yourself, but at least you can feel superior about it, eh?
Do you actually think that Apple wouldn't simply raise their prices so that their profit margin stayed the same? In what world?
This world.
You can live with lower profits. But to survive you must have sales. That sets a limit to how high you can raise prices.
In the real world law is complicated. You have to use very, very precise language and lots of it or you have a lot of unintended consequences. You're legal system then goes one of two ways: Either no law is enforced because everyone is afraid of applying the vague language harmfully or law becomes a psychotic crapshoot as laws are applied willy-nilly however a person feels at that point in time.
You might get away with a flat tax in a few hundred pages, but it's a very, very regressive tax. That means it hurts the poor and middle class while helping the rich. There's a reason all of the flat tax proponents are on the right wing in any country, and it's not just because us left-wingers like overly complicated gov't. It's because gov't and society are complicated by their very nature. If you try to escape that complexity all you're going to do is get dragged down by the ones who've long since realized that's not possible...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Typo in editorial addendum. Apple's CEO is *Tim* Cook, as it says right in the URL immediately following.
Measure twice, cut once.
That assumes they'd be willing to take that hit. In reality prices would increase.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
This is exactly correct. Once we take care of our own we are happy to help others. With an unemployment rate of anything greater than zero some could argue we still have work to do to in our own backyard before we lend a hand to the neighbors.
Today this called "racism". Which is rediculous. It's nothing like racism, it's simply the right thing to do. Slashdot has never come across as "racist". It does continue to surprise me how the comments tend to lean more conservative. I think this reflects the age, maturity and perhaps wisdom of a well developed population of readers, like myself, who have been here many years now.
I'm not an accountant but I've been paying taxes now twice as long as I didn't. Federal I ncome tax is a marginal tax system. Anything above certain levels of income is taxed at the next higher rate. Therefore Woz's Max rate may be 28% for example but only on a portion of his income above whatever the cutoff is for that rate. I pay that rate on some of my income but my EFFECTIVE tax rate, that is the total percentage of my income that I pay, is much lower than that. Of course add in sales tax and state income tax and that rate goes up. Now if one chooses to live in a city that charges taxes on top of state and federal and sales, well maybe living somewhere else is a better idea.
...purchasers of apple products should pay more tax.
I mean, if you run a business, and your costs go up, don't you have to start charging more? Or are they suggesting apple employees should be paid less?
People in the west are more deserving of jobs in the west.
Do you think the chinese are randomly handing our jobs to poor americans?
Of course not.
It makes perfect sense for a country to protect the interests of its citizens before the interests of others.
I don't understand how this drivel got modded up.
I don't see any particular good uses of the tax money being collected by the federal US Government.
Having once been a US tax payer I used to look at NASA and the US military and think to myself "yep, that's what you are now funding".
So Apple, Google and all the big earners are forced to pay USG 50% of profit.
Who exactly benefits from that?
I own none of those shares but I'd rather see the shareholders get the lot.
That's an interesting point. One can talk fairness but the goal is to have money to pay for services. Let's say we were to tax all of the multi-billion dollar corporations on their earnings both overseas and domestically.
According to http://www.tradingeconomics.co... that $1.3T in Q1 of 2016. In 2015, we're looking at roughly $6T in profits (not revenue). And that's publicly traded companies (which have to report profit and revenue).
Now I, personally, find 50% to be a bit ridiculous as a corporate income tax so let's say, oh, 25%, but on all profits made.
That's $1.5T/year in tax revenue. In 2015, the Federal government collected ~$3.25T in taxes (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/3248723000000-federal-taxes-set-record-fy-2015-21833-worker-feds-0)
So by levying a 25% flat tax on corporate profits, we've increased overall tax revenue by ~46%.
Your point about it being hard to levy taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals is valid. But that doesn't necessarily mean we should just throw up our hands and give up on the idea.
Tariffs built this country, and paid for most of this country’s expenses for the first 73 years, without having to institute an income tax.
Apple is hardly the worst offender. In fact, Apple pays more in taxes every year than any other U.S. corporation. Why not question companies like Google or Cisco, who also minimize taxes by keeping IP overseas.
Or why not focus on FedEx, GE, Honeywell, or the many other corporations who get tax credits every year, so rather than paying taxes, actually get money back from the taxpayer?
Trust me friend, there are countries that have zero unemployment and you do not want to live in one.
You are welcome on my lawn.
People loathe Trump because it is fairly obvious it doesn't matter what he says. It's pretty clear he does what he wants when he wants to and that is exactly the type of person you cannot rely on. Vote for him and he will do the exact opposite. The sad part is the people who are behind him will probably still be there cheering him on. Also, we don't need his staff punching Putin in the face one day.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
He'll build a giant trench through the middle of the US and make the Canadians pay for it?
This is why you stop taxing companies, and instead tax the money on its way out of the companies, on its way into the investors' pockets. Set a limit after which all capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. Make it high enough to allow for folks investing for retirement, but low enough to catch folks who are earning nontrivial amounts of money in the form of capital gains that are really glorified earned income (e.g. C*O bonuses).
Also, you'd need to tax all capital gains on U.S. stocks by foreign investors. Not sure how you'd do that, but it would be necessary as part of shifting the tax burden up one layer of abstraction.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That's what really burns me about this scapegoating of Apple. Say what you will about the money staying overseas - it was at least earned overseas by selling physical products overseas. Google has actually signed large chunks of their intellectual property over to offshore subsidiaries in order to dodge taxation of it. That is straight-up smoke and mirrors.
First of all, the US already taxes corporate profits more than that. Second, corporate profits right now pay for three major things: retirement benefits, investment in new businesses, and R&D. In what way is the federal government making better use of these profits than that?
Corporations don't pay taxes, they only collect them. That 50% you're calling for comes out of the shareholders' pockets.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't think you know anything about either. Perhaps you could explain some. I could use a laugh.
If a legitimate business meal deduction was on a Republicanâ(TM)s tax return, you can bet that Sanders would be railing against it as just another âoefat catâ ripping off the U.S. Treasury. So why is he deducting almost $9000 worth of business meals himself?
Wow. That's about as textbook a straw man as you could ever hope to see. "We're just going to make up something we think someone else would say and then criticise them for it".
If the worst thing they can find in Bernie's tax return is that, he practically deserves a sainthood.
Seriously, corporate taxes are too easy to hide.
It is time to cut the tax breaks, cut the not paying taxes when offshore, and at the same time, cut the taxes. By having corporations pay increasing tax up to 20%, we would see more money.
At the same time, we need to change the dividend tax to 30%. IOW, it should be at similar level as what is paid for wages.
Ideally, we would ALSO prohibit all executives from owning publicly traded stock in their industry. By doing that, they can properly manage the company.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Lots of folks put money in various managed funds for retirement. They don't touch the money, but behind the scenes, some fund manager is buying and selling stocks to try to keep the fund in the black. In may cases, those transactions are taxed just like you were buying and selling the stocks yourself, rather than having the taxes deferred until you take the money out. The difference between the capital gains tax rates and full income tax rates can make the difference between having enough money to retire and not, particularly given that all of us who are younger than 50 are pretty much assuming that Congress will have stolen all the money from Social Security without paying it back long before any of us retire.
Also, the fact that home sales are treated as capital gains allows for exemptions to capital gains on the sale of your primary residence. This can make the difference between someone being able to afford to move and being stuck in one place because the taxes would diminish the value of their home by so much that they wouldn't be able to buy another one. With that said, it used to be a one-time exemption, and now it is every two years. That's way too often to allow somebody to take a $250,000 exemption, IMO. I'm not saying we should necessarily roll it back to the pre-1997 rules, but the size of the current loophole is just plain ridiculous.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Seriously? A 50% tax rate? That's highway robbery. It's an insane amount of money to pay for a government.
Yeah, fuck civilisation, I wanna be riiiich! I mean never mind that any get rich scheme will in all likelihood require soild infrastructure on which to run.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Please read the parent post then reread mine. I already addressed that.
All corporate taxes are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher price, employee in the form of lower salary or investors in the form of lower profits. Corporate taxes only serve to benefit politicians who can hide the tax from voters and solicit cash from corporations in exchanged for special treatment. Come on people you're smarter than this!
I bet you know all the verses to "Kumbaya".
Back in the real world, if you accept that appearance is a crude proxy for genetic makeup, and people of the same race tend to appear more similar to each other, any gene that caused people to favour people similar to themselves would have a huge survival advantage.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
....just write another check for whatever you think Apple "owes" and send it in.
Probably get dinner with Obama out of it.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Companies should pay income tax, OR their shareholders should, But NOT both, otherwise the shareholders are paying tax TWICE for the same profits (Once when the company makes them, And again when the shareholder is paid their dividends, Or they sell their units to realize the value increased by the company's profit).
Also, it is probably preferable that only the shareholders should pay the tax, Because making the company pay the tax is unfair to Low-income shareholders who would be in a lower income tax bracket.
Also, making the company itself pay income tax is unfair to "Qualified investors" such as Retirement accounts which are supposed to be Tax-Free or Deferred Tax in order to help Low-Income/Middle-class people to provide for their financial needs in retirement, when they will be too old to work.
So which one wins in Spain, being Hispanic or being European? :-p Likewise, the notion that jobs in a country should be filled primarily with people from the same country isn't "racism". It's protectionism. Whether it's right or wrong is a matter for another discussion, but nobody is saying that people outside of Europe and the US should be unemployed (for whatever weird reason you think someone would think that).
Ezekiel 23:20
It's not an advantage for you, it's an advantage for the genes in question. You as an individual are not nearly as important as you think.
Ezekiel 23:20
Not only that but just who is "Steve Cook"? Is he one of those untrained monkeys??
That's just stupid. People of similar looks aren't similar because they congregated and kept their genes clean. They combined different genes and over generations the successful combinations for that local ended up looking similar.
Homogenized gene pools are detrimental to propagation and survival. Naturally we try to provide as much variance in our system as possible.
We don't gravitate to the bland normal looking everyday people in the village. We seek out and compete for the variance. This is normally not good for society so we have social norms in terms of manners, costumes, and practices to maintain civility. With in the social norms that we are taught, we always try to be the one that stands out, the special one, the best etc.
Homogeneous gene pools are highly susceptible to mass extinctions. Most of the genes that leaned toward that fork in the road probably have gone extinct long before one of ours decided to be the human butthole.
In a CBS '60 Minutes' episode, Apple CEO Steve Cook dismissed as "total crap" the notion that his first name is Steve.
Putins' a black belt or whatever the Judo eqiuvalent is. I don't see him being punched in the face anytime soon..
Unfortunately most of that .1% is in the US congress...
And why are we listening to this loser chump? If he wants to give 50% of his money to the government that is fine. It is perfectly legal for you to pay more taxes than required by law. Go ahead, Woz. Pay my day. But wait, no, he isn't wanting to give up his money! He wants to force other people to do it his way! Ah...! How totalitarian of the Woz of Id.