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Apple May Bring Back Billions In Profits To The U.S. (siliconbeat.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from the San Jose Mercury News:
Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company plans to bring back billions of dollars in profit to the U.S. next year. Cook's statement, made during an interview with RTE radio Thursday, contradicts his previous public statements on the issue: He has said for years that U.S. corporate taxes are too high, and that the Silicon Valley company wouldn't be repatriating profit until its home country changed its tax code.
"Right now I would forecast that we repatriate next year"Cook said, saying that the company has "provisioned several billion" for that purpose.
An interesting side-note: Apple accounts for 40% of Silicon Valley's profits.
"Right now I would forecast that we repatriate next year"Cook said, saying that the company has "provisioned several billion" for that purpose.
An interesting side-note: Apple accounts for 40% of Silicon Valley's profits.
Right. It's a three-way game. Apple will bring back 'a few billion'. Which, if taxed at 10 or 20% (nobody with a competent accountant pays the full marginal US rate of 35%), that will cost them a few hundred million. Small potatoes to have the US Treasury arm-twist the EU to BTFO. The USA would like to have Apple repatriate their offshore cash. Not just for the taxes, but to improve the odds that if Apple chooses to make investments, they will make them here. The EU might have shot themselves in the foot, big time, by going after Apple. Because if laws and regulations over there are subservient to "We needs the money!" thinking, that's not a place I'd like to risk expanding my business. And I suspect Apple will think the same.
every pound, euro or dollar in tax that Apple "avoids", well that's a pound, euro or dollar that we have to find.
One can legally "avoid" taxes (evasion is another issue, but not in the current case involving Apple). And the idea that "we" (whoever "we" is) have to have that money is faulty logic. We have to live within our means. And if we drop to the level of manipulating laws or regulations to get money that isn't legally owed, the whole rule of law system we live under falls apart pretty quickly.
Have gnu, will travel.