Slashdot Mirror
Cupertino's Mayor: Apple 'Abuses Us' By Not Paying Taxes (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Guardian: Apple pays a 2.3% effective tax rate on its $181bn in cash held offshore, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a not-for-profit research group focusing on tax policy. Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that Apple would owe $59.2bn in U.S. taxes if the money weren't funneled into offshore shell accounts. Criticism over the company's offshore tax schemes has become more pointed in recent months, both locally in Cupertino and from Apple's own staff. At a recent Cupertino city council meeting, some residents protested about a lack of funding for public projects, Barry Chang, Mayor of Cupertino said: "They ball up the paper and throw it, and they say 'You're making all the wrong decisions'," Chang said. "In the meantime, Apple is not willing to pay a dime. They're making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won't. They abuse us."
Hmmm .. from Apple's new headquarters gains approval of Cupertino City Council back in 2013
The Cupertino City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to reduce the annual tax break it gives Apple (AAPL) -- America's most valuable company by market capitalization, with a net income last year of $41.7 billion -- by 15 percent. Having wrung that concession from its richest corporate resident, the council then voted unanimously to give its final blessing to Apple's proposed new headquarters. The spaceship-shaped building has now officially landed.
Back in 1997, when Apple was on the verge of collapse, the city agreed to return 50 percent of the taxes generated each year from Apple's business-to-business sales as a way to help maintain the company's health and, more importantly, its Cupertino address.
Sounds like someone made a deal with the devil and now has a bit of buyers remorse.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Don't know why this is marked as being a Troll, it's factual information. The US is the only developed nation in the world that taxes companies based on worldwide profits, not just profits earned in the US. Yes, you get a tax credit for income tax you pay to other countries, but the end result is you end up paying the high US corporate income tax rate on income earned everywhere in the world, whereas foreign companies only pay the high US tax rate on income earned in the US, and the lower tax rates of income earned in other countries. This makes foreign companies a competitive advantage over US companies. Not a great policy in my opinion.
All of that money is money earned overseas. So it's not "funneled" anywhere, it's just not brought back
US profits are funneled through a Nevada subsidiary because Nevada doesn't have a corporate tax.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html
There should be a law that says "if you have any presence at all in our country, all the money you earn in other countries, and that is taxed in those other countries, should be taxed here too?
Sounds like a stupid law.
It is not stupid. As the law stands you deduct taxes already paid to other governments from the tax you own USA. Lets say 100 million dollars in USA. Then Apple sets up a post box in Banana Republic, and parks all the profits there and pays a generous 1 million dollars to the government of Banana Republic. Then it owes only 99 million to USA. The law is intended to prevent a race to the bottom. Competing governments reduce their tax rates to woe the companies and the corporations play one jurisdiction against another.
That is the current law. All taxes paid to all other governments count as though they have been paid to the US government. But, if they tax you less than USA, you pay the difference to the USA. The only glitch is, current law taxes the profits only when they are brought into the USA. So they keep the profits indefinitely off shore to dodge the tax. Hoping for an amnesty and bring it home with a lower rate to wipe the slate clean.
We should change the law to make these corporations that are keeping profits abroad from being listed in US Regulated stock exchanges. That will bring the profits home and they will pay the taxes. Or we could list them as foreign businesses with severe restrictions in lobbying and campaign contributions. That would also create a penalty for gaming our tax code.
Already the corporations have shifted most of their tax burden to the individuals. If the corporations paid the same effective rate as they paid under Ronald Reagan individual tax payers will get an immense tax relief. We can take our personal income tax rates from 36.3% top rate down to 20% top rate or even a flat tax of 15%.
All of them will shout tax cuts. Individuals and middle class gets a few bones thrown to us. The bulk of it goes to these corporations.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Apple is already the top taxpayer in [...] the whole fucking country!
Then why does Forbes list Exxon and Chevron as paying more tax? http://www.forbes.com/pictures...
Learn to love Alaska
Bingo. Apple expects a big return on all that lobbying money they've been spending in DC.
You mean that an inefficient business would fail?
If they are being kept afloat by a subsidy scheme then a different scheme would keep them in operation under a different tax regime.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php