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Every US Taxpayer Has Effectively Paid Apple At Least $6 in Recent Years (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the your-money dept.

An anonymous reader shares an ArsTechnica report: Apple has received at least $6 per American taxpayer over the last five years in the form of interest payments on billions' worth of United States Treasury bonds, according to a report by Bloomberg. Citing Apple's regulatory filings and unnamed sources, the business publication found "the Treasury Department paid Apple at least $600 million and possibly much more over the past five years in the form of interest." By taking advantage of a provision in the American tax code, Bloomberg says that Apple has "stashed much of its foreign earnings -- tax-free -- right here in the US, in part by purchasing government bonds." As The Wall Street Journal reported in September, American companies are believed to be holding approximately $2 trillion in cash overseas that is shielded from US taxes. Under American law, companies must pay a 35-percent corporate tax rate on global profits when that money is brought home -- so there is an incentive to keep as much of that money overseas as possible.

11 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    also to blame. Picking on Apple for this is really pretty silly. Every large multi-national company does this.

    1. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by networkBoy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      yup.

      Make repatriating money easier and cheaper and two things will happen:
      1) money will come back into the US and help our economy
      2) whoever does it will be crucified for being easy on big business income taxes.

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    2. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      1) money will come back into the US and help our economy

      It's unproven that money being shifted from an overseas bank to a US bank will "help the economy".

      In fact, if it comes back and ends up in the hands of a few or used for one company to buy another it could very well hurt our economy.

      Further, it's not "the economy" that needs help. It's people. And for the past 35 years, there's been little proof that helping the former necessarily helps the latter.

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    3. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Part of the issue is that the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world

      I'm not sure where this assertion comes from.

      In 2013 Microsoft had reported income of $23.2 billion, but with a federal tax liability of $3.11 billion only paid an effective federal tax rate of 13.4 percent. That's much lower than the top statutory rate of 35 percent for corporations per wikipedia.

      As someone who has made (modestly) from 50k to over 100k in my lifetime, I have only paid taxes in excess of my returns 0 times. I really don't understand how people believe corporations are treated badly in the US, given the legalized legislative bribery and SCOTUS decisions.

      Personally, I've paid the federal and state (California) in excess of my returns, maybe 2 or 3 times in decades. I just don't understand how people are in such denial of reality. Do you go the HR Block for your tax preparation?

    4. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lowering? Lowering below 0.005%? Because that is what Apple is getting "in the rest of the world" (read Ireland). The way corporations work, they would never choose higher tax rates. Where is the profit in that?

    5. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or Texas which has been doing better than California for the last twenty years.

      I'm living in Houston now, so I can have an opinion on the "Texas miracle".

      It's horseshit. First, Texas is not "doing better than California". Second, one of the ways Texas has attracted businesses and jobs is by deregulating and lowering taxes. But see, those chickens are starting to come home to roost. The real economic engine of Texas is the Houston/Gulf Coast area which had a big boom when gas was $4/gallon. At $1.85 (which is what I paid to fill up earlier tonight), there are a lot of oil folks out of work, which is hurting everything from trucking to local businesses like restaurants, drug stores, groceries, etc. The big boom in Houston now (and the reason that Houston is still the economic driver for all of Texas), is health care. We have the best medical centers and medical schools around and are building more. And even though Texas is a low-tax state, the state makes up for it by loading up its citizens with fees and licenses and surcharges galore.

      By the way, Houston is a liberal city. Blue as blue can be. It's got more in common with Austin and San Antonio than it does in more backward places like Dallas-Ft Worth or the panhandle. Hell, until recently, the mayor of Houston was a lesbian. Think about that. A lesbian mayor in Texas. Up in Dallas, they'd force her into a re-education camp and treat her with electric shock and the Bible.

      Without Houston, Texas would be sucking as bad as Kansas, which has the worst economic trend in the United States thanks to one-party Republican control of Kansas state government.

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    6. Re:Google, Motorola, Intel . . . by stealth_finger · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Trump...business savvy? Errrr...3 or 4 bankruptcies, no U.S. bank will loan to that deadbeat, the word in business is to get your money up front if you deal with Trump. I think the appellation Sgt. Bilko is more apt.

      He's gotta be pretty savvy if he can fuck up as much as he does and still be stupidly loaded enough to buy the presidency.

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  2. Um, so? by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Uh, this is the most uninteresting news ever. So, you're saying that Apple has put a lot of its spare cash into government bonds, which pay out the usual government bond interest; which are actually historically relatively low rates compared to other interest rates. This is interesting why, exactly?

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  3. Yawn by mccrew · · Score: 4, Insightful
    And probably more to the communist government of China, another major holder of US Treasury securities.

    So other than "the rich keep getting richer", is there a point here?

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  4. You know who else we are paying? Nazis. by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Far worse than Apple being given our hard-earned money, is the fact that somewhere, sometime, a real life Illinois Nazi has bought a government bond. Who knows how many DECADES we taxpayers have been paying these loathsome groups?

    Clearly what the government needs to do to cut off the funds to monsters like Apple and Nazis is default on all government bonds today and declare no more will we be paying anyone these ill-gotten gains labeled with the seemingly innocent moniker "interest".

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  5. Fake news by slapout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Headline should read: "Apple loans U.S. Government money"

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