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Apple Paid $0 In Taxes To New Zealand, Despite Sales of $4.2 Billion (nzherald.co.nz)
Apple paid no income tax to New Zealand's Inland Revenue Department for the last 10 years, according to an article shared by sit1963nz, prompting calls for the company to "do the right thing" even from some American-based Apple users. From the New Zealand Herald:
Bryan Chaffin of The Mac Observer, an Apple community blog site founded in 1998...wrote that Apple was the largest taxpayer in the United States, but 'pays next to nothing in most parts of the world... [L]ocal taxes matter. Roads matter. Schools matter. Housing authorities matter. Health care matters. Regulation enforcement matters. All of the things that support civil society matter. Apple's profits are made possible by that civil society, and the company should contribute its fair share.'"
Apple's accounts "show apparent income tax payments of $37 million," according to an earlier article, "but a close reading shows this sum was actually sent abroad to the Australian Tax Office, an arrangement that has been in place since at least 2007. Had Apple reported the same healthy profit margin in New Zealand as it did for its operations globally it would have paid $356 million in taxes over the period."
"It is absolutely extraordinary that they are able to get away with paying zero tax in this country," said Green Party co-leader James Shaw. "I really like Apple products -- they're incredibly innovative -- but it looks like their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers."
Apple's accounts "show apparent income tax payments of $37 million," according to an earlier article, "but a close reading shows this sum was actually sent abroad to the Australian Tax Office, an arrangement that has been in place since at least 2007. Had Apple reported the same healthy profit margin in New Zealand as it did for its operations globally it would have paid $356 million in taxes over the period."
"It is absolutely extraordinary that they are able to get away with paying zero tax in this country," said Green Party co-leader James Shaw. "I really like Apple products -- they're incredibly innovative -- but it looks like their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers."
"but it looks like their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers."
That's their job. Change your laws.
I think they can cut it down further.
People always complain about this sort of thing, but you know most individuals would use legal tax "loop-holes" to avoid paying taxes if they could (and many wealthy people come close). Apple and all the other zero-tax paying companies are not non-profits, they're in it for the money. If people are upset about all this, perhaps our elected representatives can change the laws? Seriously, if it's legal, what of it? Like I said, most people would do the same if they could...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It seems like every time a subject like this comes up, people are accusing the company of tax evasion. Do we expect Apple to make a donation to the New Zealand government? Of course not. If New Zealand wanted their money, they'd make a law demanding it.
Apple almost certainly paid sales tax. In addition, people who bought Apple devices already paid income tax. Why should Apple, on top of all that, pay corporate tax in New Zealand, when mostly what they are doing is importing goods into New Zealand?
If you get upset about Apple not paying corporate tax in New Zealand, then perhaps Americans should start imposing corporate and income tax on New Zealand farmers whose Kiwis and sheep are shipped to the US. How about it?
Instead of the stupid fucking tax laws that let this shit happen. Lessee. I can pay this weird dude $300k to do my taxes, and he saves me > 300k in taxes. Win!!
Fix the fucking goddamned tax laws for fucks sake.
Oh, my bad. Dude/industry giving my re-election campaign hundreds of thousands goes away. Loophole? What loophole?
The VAT tax rate on that $4.2 billion is 15%. New Zealand made a lot of money off those iphone sales.
This is a basic problem with corporate income tax: everyone in the world feels they are entitled to their "fair share". Corporate tax itself is a kind of double taxation: a corporation is made up of people who pay income tax. In addition, there is sales tax paid on all goods sold in a given country. I imagine a great deal of sales tax has been paid on Apple products in New Zealand, money the government wouldn't have if Apple didn't sell products there.
The problem with corporate income tax is that it is always possible for a mutlinational corporation to shift its profits to whichever country offers the lowest tax rate, unfairly enriching that one country. The best solution is probably to get rid of corporate income tax altogether, and make up the difference with sales taxes. (After all, the cost of corporate taxes are passed along to the consumers anyway.) This way, there's no arguing about who is entitled to the tax money: it's paid by the consumer wherever the sale takes place. This isn't the first time corporate taxes have caused problems: remember the court battle in which the E.U. argued that Apple owed more taxes to the Irish government, despite the fact that the Irish government didn't even want those revenues? This is the kind of absurdity that results from corporate taxes.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
This is insane. A country has the power to make laws. New Zealand has laws and agreements in place that ALLOW this. Then, the same government whines if these agreements are used by companies.
If I make a rule in my house, where anybody coming in can take a candy per person, I should not complain about a greedy family of 36 shows up and takes 36 candies. I can change the rules, adjust them, fix them, but definitely not whinge about it.
Those laws are made to please the politician's rich friends -- as well as the politicians themselves -- so that they can move their assets and income to countries with stupidly low rates (Ireland, Caribbean, etc.). If you don't want this to happen, change the laws. If you can't change the laws without upsetting your rich friends, put up and shut up.
Free Software Magazine
You might want to go see how much they paid in sales tax, import tax, and other tax before you cry about income tax.
That's the easiest way to deal with this problem. Fuck Free Trade.
All of the things that support civil society matter. Apple's profits are made possible by that civil society, and the company should contribute its fair share.'"
Apple (and every other company) does contribute. They product fabulous products at prices customers are very willing to pay. That means there's a substantial consumer surplus captured by Kiwis. That's Apple's contribution to New Zealand society.
(Side note. I don't remember where I read this so I can't cite it. A study showed that most of the value created by companies is captured by customers. Apple may be worth zillions but if you add up how much people would have been willing to pay for their products, it's something like 10 to 20 times higher.)
Remember also, Apple doesn't ultimately pay taxes. It just collects taxes and writes the check. Ultimately the burden of the tax falls on Apple's customers (through higher prices), employees (through lower wages), and investors (through lower profits). I'm guessing most of them don't live in New Zealand.
Income, payroll, property, sales taxes, business regulations, labour laws, money manipulation, interest rate manipulation.... Anarcho capitalism with as tiny a government as possible without creating an alternative government is the answer to all this government theft. Politicians and all other government employees are looking at profitable companies are salivating at the prospect of holding guns to their heads in most obvious racketeering of all time - something bad may happen to your company if you don't pay up. I think businesses really need to step up their game and help to reduce governments to dust, but they don't do that because the legal power that the governments sell is so sweet, it can be used to destroy competition. It is short sighted of-course, it's better to have a real free market and competition without government oppression rather than try and use that oppression, this strategy cannot have long term positive results for anybody, even those who are currently able of buying access to government oppression for their own benefit.
You can't handle the truth.
This is just sensationalist headline ?
Please understand that Apple did pay taxes as there is a sales tax. In the other hand people do not understand that sales are not taxed, its the profit from such --
This just means that Apple returned the money to the economy. If Apple can prove that the operation costs, investments, depreciation and such are more than the sales, there is no income tax, as there was no profit.
This is normal everywhere.
Yes, let's ban the sale of everything made by American companies in NZ.
OK, no more Apple stuff. No more Microsoft software. No more Google services.
How's it all looking over there now using nothing but home grown hardware and software?
Kill the complicated tax codes that let people do these things and replace all of it with a simple flat sales tax for your country. No exceptions.
Tada. Everyone pays something. Everyone.
Love sees no species.
We do have Goods and Services tax, which Apples customers pay. Apple paid no tax.
They can use Megaupload! There will be no shortage of mp3s and porn at least!
Sounds like some N.Z. politicians might be on the take.
No responsible politician lets $4.2 billion just slip away.
Can't say how they are doing it, but common sense says they are stealing.
They innovated the tax dodge, so that when they're accused of being unfair, hundreds of fanboys and others who hate 'the gubmint' will rush in and defend them.
Theft requires it to be illegal, as the taxes are collected for the express purpose of benefiting society, and are only approved for that legal purpose, it cannot be theft, unless you are alleging some unlawful corruption in the New Zealand government.
Furthermore, it is done with the express purpose and consent of those thereby taxed, as all persons willingly remain in New Zealand, rather than vacate it, including Apple.
Next time, I suggest you have a greater command of the facts. That, and avoid taking medications which cause cognitive impairment.
You people and your high taxes. That doesn't work forever. You are creating an economically unfriendly environment to work and do business. I've moved out of a high tax area to conduct business from a low tax low cost of living high living standards area. I run a tech company out of Keene, NH. Humorously Keene has high taxes, but it's nothing compared to places like NY, NJ, California, and don't even get me started with comparing it to Europe. Though there are worse places to do business like Brazil, Russia, China, etc.
Please understand what you're seeing here. There is no "outrage" at this phenomenon. Nobody is claiming Apple owes decades' worth of back taxes. There's just a newspaper that's been struggling for survival for a decade now, seen its revenues shrink year on year, and can barely afford any journalists any more.
So they're trying to take the story from Britain, and pretend they can translate it directly into New Zealand. It's what passes for journalism in New Zealand.
I wish I were exaggerating. But I'm not. Journalism in NZ is... not quite dead, but if you're accustomed to an active media with decent revenues and competition - you should certainly adjust your sights about 45% downward when viewing the NZ Herald.
A "Client copy" of Apple's Corporate tax return to NZL from 2005, that was sent by an anonymous journalist!
Money you would pay to the government when not legally required to do so is called charity. Period.
Unless they extradite Kim Dotcom
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
There are plenty of pro-Trump stories posted to Slashdot. Hell, there have been pro-Trump articles about that exact topic posted to Slashdot:
Stop with the bullshit persecution/victim complex, already. The world isn't full of "sjw hillary fans" out to get you.
If people are upset about all this, perhaps our elected representatives can change the laws?
The problem with this is that these companies have an army of lawyers trying to find holes in whatever laws are passed. They can find these holes faster than laws can be patched because governments have to tread carefully to make sure new laws do not accidentally penalize companies who are behaving themselves. The only way I can see governments defeating this is by giving themselves far more discretionary taxation power to target individual companies than they currently have and that can lead to abuse of that power if we are not careful.
This gives me an opportunity to rant about Apple, in regards to another self-serving, money-grabbing practice. I bought an Apple Watch from the local state government surplus. This is a place where surplus government property ends up when it is no longer needed. It is also where stuff from airports ends up - items that were confiscated (knives, corkscrews, toys that look in any way like a weapon, and other "dangerous" items) and stuff that was lost and never claimed.
I bought the watch knowing it may not even function (although it looked to be in perfect condition), because they did not have the means to charge and test it. They just liquidate whatever comes down the pipe. So I charge the watch and pair it up, and find it has an Activation Lock on it. Now this is a watch that sat at the airport for the prescribed legal amount of time and was never claimed, and then it went to the state level where it was also never claimed. So many months later (or a year or more - it's first gen watch) it was legally sold by the government to me.
So I came to a realization. I have no way of contacting the original owner. I can see that they have a gmail address, but Apple will not show the entire address. Apple will not contact them on my behalf, or otherwise do anything for me to get this watch back into their possession. I cannot use the watch. No one can (I spent a lot of time searching, and there is no way to circumvent at this time). In January Apple removed their online tool that lets people check if a phone or watch has an Activation Lock, so there is not even any good way to know a used Apple product of these types are usable.
So who does this serve? That's easy. Apple. Because I cannot get the watch back to the person who lost it, and because I cannot use it, this watch has been taken off the market. Each instance of a product taken off the market is one that does not complete against the sales of new products. Imagine if iPhones and Apple Watches could never be resold - it would result in a huge increase in sales of new devices (which are the only ones Apple profits off of directly). That is what this accomplishes, because you just never know if a used device is actually usable. It pretty much shuts down the ability for private individuals to resell on Ebay or any other way online that cannot be finalized in person, where the buyer can check the device before they buy it.
Sure, as a side affect, perhaps this reduces the theft of devices to some degree. I argue that is merely a minor side affect. Thieves are going to grab any device they have a good opportunity to take, because it could be an Android phone, or maybe an iPhone that was not registered with iCloud's Find my Device. But I argue the primary purpose is to increase Apple's profit margins further by "destroying" a significant number of devices that cannot be used by anyone else.
Better known as 318230.
Uh what?
http://www.customs.govt.nz/news/resources/tariff/theworkingtariffdocument/Pages/default.aspx
Apple's customers pay. Apple paid no tax.
That is a meaningless difference. If I pay $500 for an iPhone, and Apple gets $450 and the government gets $50, it doesn't really matter if I hand the money to them before or after the government gets their cut. The result is exactly the same either way.
Android is better and cheaper anyway.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
if Apple and the rest of the corporations weren't busy buying those same laws with the tax dollars they're not paying...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
to make up the difference? That's something I hear from anti-gov't/anti-tax folks every time. e.g. that there's no point to government since they corps will just work around it. Or if in fact that New Zealand _can_ get revenue from taxes to run a country/civilization then maybe allowing these sorts of tax dodges (bought and paid for by Apple themselves) is detrimental to everyone but a lucky few 1%ers...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sales taxes are regressive. They hurt the poor and middle class and help the rich. That's because the working class spend most or all of their money on survival.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Wait, so the article is saying that since Apple is hardly even profitable in NZ, and makes next to nothing, it similarly does not pay many taxes? It is almost like their is a correlation between profits and taxes...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Companies should pay zero taxes. There's no point charging an entity that just goes around and charges it's customers to cover it's tax burden.
Companies pay no tax and get no voting power. That's how it should be.
This is the tax system. The concepts of "do the right thing" and "their fair share" are ambiguous concepts. What is the right amount ? 10%? 20%? 30%? On what income is it levied ?? It's an easy slogan to use without having to put any meat on it. Nothing in this is illegal. If you are pissed off about it lobby your government and representatives to amend the tax laws. Apple as a corporate entity are obliged to make a return for their shareholders. Minimising the tax burden is one of the ways to do it. Is Slashdot now promoting the policies of the "progressive" left ?
Companies rely on government investment in infrastructure like roads, power, shipping, airports, rail, military, police and fire services as well as a 1000 other more services without which they could not exist in those countries. If you think company should not be able to use ANY of those then fine they should pay no tax.
Companies rely on government investment in infrastructure like roads, power, shipping, airports, rail, military, police and fire services as well as a 1000 other more services without which they could not exist in those countries.
How much "road use" does Apple need to haul iPhones from the airport to the retail outlet?
What about a company that sells, say, ebooks, and uses no government infrastructure? Should they pay no taxes?
If you are going to justify corporate taxes based on "infrastructure use" then it should be in proportion to how much they use that infrastructure.
http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/business/trade-tariffs/tariffs-in-new-zealand
Most goods imported into New Zealand have no import tariffs. Tariffs of five percent apply to some imported goods that are also made here including textiles, processed foods, machinery, steel, and plastic products.
I think most people have missed the point. The uproar over this is not caused by Apple following the law and paying no tax. The uproar is caused by the imbalance of power this highlights between the rich and poor as well as the NZ governments seeming lack of interest in actually doing anything about it.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
This has to be the most courageous thing Apple has done.
New Zealand has a population of 4.471 million. $4.2 billion / 4.471 million = $939 per capita spent on Apple products.
China has a population of 1.357 billion. Apple's annual revenue in China was $48.5 billion, or $36 per capita.
Europe has a population of 743 million. Apple's Europe revenue was $49.95 billion. Or $67 per capita.
Japan has a population of 127 million. Apple's Japan revenue was $16.92 billion. or $133 per capita.
The U.S. has a population of 319 million. Apple's revenue in the Americas was $86.62 billion. Even if you attribute 100% of that to the U.S., that only works out to $272 per capita.
So either New Zealanders absolutely love buying Apple products by nearly an order of magnitude more than the rest of the developed world, or the $4.2 billion figure is somehow exaggerated.
I'd like to see how Outlaw Apple Stores operate. Zero law protection and enforcement.
Of course as a law-abiding tax-paying citizen, you still enjoy protection of law. If you want to shoot the Apple store clerk, you're free to do so and he's not even allowed to shoot back.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I've lived in NZ for a number of years now and I used to read the NZ Herald, Stuff.co.nz and other publications in this group.
To say they are anti-Apple partisan is an understatement. It's just hateful bile, and industrial propaganda.
Any comments I posted under their articles were being either blocked or deleted if I said anything pro-Apple or contradicted their anti-Apple editorial.
Apple is a US company. Yes it sells into NZ and the NZ government collects the standard 15% on all Apple's sales.
I'm at a loss to understand why sales of $4.2B should be taxed for anything else but sales tax?
If NZ wants more money then they should look at imposing import tax on electronic goods.
Singling out a single company isn't right.
Of course it's exaggerated. See my other comment below.
The NZ Herald, and it's minions, is an anti-Apple propaganda machine.
It's comparable to the UK's Daily Mail (it even re-publishes DM's articles).
Trash journalism.
seriously how many fucking H1B visa stories do we need here?, you find one that hasn't been accepted and it is somehow a conspiracy despite the shit ton that have previously been on here over past weeks and months?
PS: I would actually say the same about this article on Legal tax minimisation. Yes we fucking know it exists, everyone fucking knows. This is something for individual countries to address and we don't need to see a constant stream of how much Apple or Microsoft or Google or IBM or whoever the fuck you want to name avoided paying.
Companies don't pay sales tax, people do.
NO, it should be based on how much money they take in from the consumers, they are part of the system and are reliant on the system remaining in place to survive and therefore need to pay based on how much they take out of the system, not on how much they use of any one particular resource.Apple die in NZ if they can't get a product into the country as does an ebooks if there is no power for users to consume/buy them.
Do its employees, or those involved otherwise in selling iPhones, magically teleport to work, or use roads? Do the office supplies also teleport in? The water for the water coolers? The returned products?
Then somebody should start a mobile phone production business in NZ. :)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Take the EU as an example. This very Jean-Claude Juncker, the longtime EU Comissions's boss? He set up a tax haven in Luxembourg.
Especially the right-liberal governments are in a race to the bottom to offer bigcorps nearly-zero tax conditions (in very complicated ways: the ones focus more on transfers, the others on "intellectual property"), allowing such repugnant monstrosities as the "double Irish" and the "Ductch sandwich" (go look those up -- and barf).
Juncker and Co. are the real traitors. They should be in jail.
That stuff is the real root of those disgusting and dangerous populisms.
Basing taxes on infrastructure would require a significant bureaucracy. It would be much easier to introduce a subscription based model for the iPhone so you pay in proportion to usage.
Companies should pay zero taxes. There's no point charging an entity that just goes around and charges it's customers to cover it's tax burden.
Then the shareholders of the company should pay tax on their profit instead. Where do Apple's shareholders pay tax?
Companies pay no tax and get no voting power. That's how it should be.
Companies may not vote but they have plenty of financial and other power, much of it unregulated, unlike that of the voter.
The "stupid" person beat the entire Republican establishment and the highly experienced Democratic nominee. He's a terrible human being but he's not stupid.
And the ones who decided to use amoral,un-ethical methods to avoid tax are exactly the same ones who are looking to get kiwi nationality,I wonder how much tax the kiwis think.they will get from a few thousand very wealthy tanks ?
Do its employees, or those involved otherwise in selling iPhones, magically teleport to work, or use roads?
Should companies pay lower taxes if their employees walk to work, or telecommute?
I'd like to see a deeper explanation of why Apple would be paying tax in NZ. All its staff (sales, support, App Store, iTunes etc) are based overseas, primarily in Australia for NZ operations. There is no Apple Store in NZ (just 3rd-party resellers) and support calls in NZ are handled in Australia. Sure, lots of Apple products sell there, but that's all through 3rd parties (who pay taxes). Can someone clarify what Apple would be paying taxes for?
NO, it should be based on how much money they take in from the consumers
That is a "sales tax" (GST in NZ), which Apple already collects on their sales in NZ.
When TFA says Apple pays "$0 in taxes" they mean Apple pays "$0 in taxes after you subtract all the taxes (GST, payroll, excise tax, etc) that they DO pay."
How's it all looking over there now using nothing but home grown hardware and software?
Much cleaner and smaller, presumably. No more installing 10 GB of software merely to use a glorified toposort (Excel).
Ezekiel 23:20
There are lots of comments above that range from what amounts to victim-blaming (Don't like the result? Then change the laws.) to tax education (Apple merely collects the VAT for the government, but the customer is considered to have paid it.) to hysterical outrage (kill them kill them kill them ... oh, wait, maybe that was a different thread).
In my country (USA), we have non-profit and for-profit entities, as they are commonly called. The non-profits include entities that can have considerable land wealth, like universities. Two of our most famous universities, MIT and Harvard, jointly own over half of the land in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the city where they are located. Neither of them are legally required to pay state property tax, because of their non-profit status (let's overlook for the moment that state and federal tax exempt status are related but technically separate things). But they also both benefit greatly from the surrounding city and its services, so they BOTH pay tens of millions of dollars to the city; such that are called "payment in lieu of tax" so that they retain their non-profit status. I don't know if they are paying the same amount as they would if they had for-profit status.
There is no legal requirement for them to do so. Indeed, there is a clear legal position that has been created, the not-for-profit status, in order to provide them a clear and explicit means to NOT pay, as their mission is considered important to the well-being of society. But they make payments ANYWAY. It is a moral obligation. It is also not entirely altruistic, as without these payments, the social environment around the universities would deteriorate significantly. You want nice things like infrastructure, emergency services, primary and secondary education, democracy? You gotta pay for them.
There is no fundamental reason that Apple, despite there being a legal path to avoid taxes no matter how complicated, could not make contributions to each and every country in which they sell products while still making embarrassingly immense profits. I bet some sharp-penciled tax attorneys would even find a way to make such contributions tax deductable. Apple would rid themselves of the negative press, get a nice write-off, and the countries (here, NZ) would benefit as well.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Yes. That's an easy answer. Should companies pay less taxes if they appear to be doing something that nets them a loss even if they in reality didn't 'lose'? That's a better question. Apple benefits from everyone but ends up paying very little, even where they actually DO pay. Richest company in the world and all that.
The problem on the ground in New Zealand seems to be something of a side effect of being New Zealand -- a small yet prosperous nation at the end of the world and the end of the supply chain. They kind of need to be an attractive marketplace for sellers otherwise they may not be worth the effort of supplying.
But my problem with meta-national tax strategies isn't really with the avoidance of taxes so much, although slightly irksome. Apple does pay a lot of taxes, although perhaps not enough to specific jurisdictions. If anything, I think Apple owe the US government more as it is the civil authority with the most clout to protect its intellectual property and business interests.
My problem is that so many of these big companies are so profitable yet they just hoard the profits without doing much of anything with them but dump them in short term cash-equivalent securities. They invest tiny portions in R&D, pay out tiny portions in dividends, pay large executive bonuses and then sit on the rest, mostly using it to buy up products that challenge their market dominance.
This last bit skews the larger innovation landscape through perverse motivations on innovators who see winning the buyout lottery as the main end-goal in innovation. Instead of focusing on creating new companies with competitive products, they create new companies that look like competitive products but end up just being buyout bait.
IMHO, the main problem with our current iteration of capitalism is that it enables hoarding of capital and hoarded capital doesn't get put efficiently to work in the economy, and only seems to get put to work staving off competition.
Your hypothetical ebook vendor is a bad example. They depend on contract law enforcement, IP law enforcement, and of course stable fiat currency.
I think that 4.2 billion dollar figure is over 10 years, which would make it $93.90 per capita. Much more reasonable figure then.
... Are you really that dense or do you think we're all stupid.
Again, my faithful reader, let me help you.
You are comparing multiple years with single years. That's right, you're also an idiot. That number is the total from many years. The numbers you used for other countries are for single years.
I'm really amazed by the stupidity in this thread. I'm just going to believe you did it on purpose because I'm not sure you can be that stupid and have unsupervised access to a computer. I imagine they frown on it should you start licking the screen.
It doesn't help that the government has huge amounts of waste, runs an international health service, and pisses away of tax money in "foreign aid" at a time when there is a budgetary deficit in our own country.
Spare me. The US government spends approximately $600 billion per year on a grossly oversized military and coincidentally in 2016 also borrowed about $600 billion to pay for it. Less than 1% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid versus around 16% to the military. The US is among the smallest donors of foreign aid as a percent of GDP among wealthy countries. You're arguing that we "piss away money on foreign aid" when in fact what we are pissing away money on is weapons to defend against mostly non-existent threats. Your "facts" are wrong and I suggest you take some time to discover the real ones.
New Zealand has a population of 4.471 million. $4.2 billion / 4.471 million = $939 per capita spent on Apple products.
China has a population of 1.357 billion. Apple's annual revenue in China was $48.5 billion, or $36 per capita.
Europe has a population of 743 million. Apple's Europe revenue was $49.95 billion. Or $67 per capita.
Japan has a population of 127 million. Apple's Japan revenue was $16.92 billion. or $133 per capita.
The U.S. has a population of 319 million. Apple's revenue in the Americas was $86.62 billion. Even if you attribute 100% of that to the U.S., that only works out to $272 per capita.
So either New Zealanders absolutely love buying Apple products by nearly an order of magnitude more than the rest of the developed world, or the $4.2 billion figure is somehow exaggerated.
$4.2billion is over 10 years
It doesn't matter who pays the tax. It's the end user in all cases. Whether Apple sells it's phone $1000 and pays the govt $150 or sells its phone $850 and the user pays the govt $150 makes no difference other than semantically.
You are talking about tax incidence. But you forgot about an important detail. Companies cannot always simply pass on any taxes. Just because the government assigns a particular tax rate to my company doesn't necessarily mean I can raise prices to compensate. The reasons for this vary but usually it is because of competitive pressures. So in many cases the company ends up eating some percentage of the cost and their profits are lower. It's unclear if this would apply in Apple's case but it is clear that Apple cannot simply charge any amount they want. At some point the price gets high enough that people will seek out alternatives which is why Android has huge market share despite modest profits. In the long run (years) all prices are variable but for shorter periods of time there often are constraints on pricing power.
But if a company can manage to (legally) dodge all taxes that can be a huge competitive advantage in pricing power. It allows them to sell a product for less money than would otherwise be possible, even if it is a premium product with a fat margin.
Companies rely on government investment in infrastructure like roads, power, shipping, airports, rail, military, police and fire services as well as a 1000 other more services without which they could not exist in those countries.
How much "road use" does Apple need to haul iPhones from the airport to the retail outlet?
What about the road use of people going to their shops, their employees etc etc. It's not just about per mile usage per company vehicle or some shit. They use and benefit from the whole infrastructure yet refuse to contribute. Maybe they should set up their own plumbing, power, post, roads and all kinds of other services that let them operate as easily as they can do, maybe they should educate their own workers from scratch instead of expecting a basic level. I bet they expect the police to take action if one of their shops is robbed. Why should they expect the police to say anything other than go fuck yourselves? If one of their shops is on fire 999 should tell them to put it out themselves.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
A flat consumption tax has many advantages, one of which is simplicity.
Taxing things usually results in less of those things. Taxing income, property, and profits without exemption will result in less of those things - or moving those things to where the tax liability is the least.
No one wants an economy with less income, property, and profits - so we create a perverse system of deductions and tax incentives - another system to be gamed.
Let's just scrap all taxes and move to a consumption tax. Those that consume more will pay higher tax. Those that consume less will pay a lower tax.
No, he's stupid. He just lacks the particular stupidity found in the Beltway Bubble.
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Paying more taxes is not ethical.
It can be. Whether it is an ethical action or not is situation dependent within the context of the society where it occurs.
Governments are necessary evils to maintain social contracts and civilization.
Agreed. One could say the same thing about corporations to a large degree. They are useful tools that allow individuals to collaborate for a greater good than they could achieve themselves.
Overreaching government is unethical.
Agreed with the caveat that your definition of overreach and my definition may be substantially different. The conservative US view of what constitutes overreach is not the only or even necessarily the correct one. And in reality you can get good results from two different governments with very different outlooks on how much government involvement is beneficial. You can have a very involved socialist oriented government or a much more constrained capitalist government and get good results both ways. Neither is inherently better or worse.
Government double-taxing is unethical.
Poppycock. Multiple forms of taxation are used on almost everything we do and for very good reasons. From a cash flow point of view there really is no such thing as double taxation. The tax laws might tax you more than once but at the end of the day you'll pay a certain net amount. Whether you pay $20 or $10 twice the result is the same either way. It is possible for the net tax rate to be too high but the whole "double tax on corporations" argument is a bogus one.
And...corporate income tax is a dumb idea in the first place, when those funds have already been taxes through both income and sales.
Corporate income tax exists so that non-active shareholders who bought shares through a secondary market don't have to pay taxes on their personal income taxes for activities they have effectively no control over. What good is buying a stock that goes up 5% if I pay all that back because Apple had a good year and made a big profit? Yes in a sense it can be "double" taxation but in reality it really isn't aside from the fact that money is paid on two occasions instead of one larger tax bill. And just because you pay (for example) a sales tax doesn't mean all other forms of taxation should be off the table. Good tax policy actually requires a variety of types of taxes to keep funding streams predictable. Depend too heavily on one tax stream (like housing values) and governments can find their budgets under water very quickly in the event of a downturn in that market.
Pretty disgusting isnt it. apple and their worshippers are an embarrassment to the entire tech industry.
Actually real ideology cannot be situational. Real positions are not changing regardless of the circumstances, otherwise it's expedience and not a position or ideology in the first place.
Utilitarianism
is very much situational and is very much an ideology that it is only the outcomes that matter. You are talking about deontology which is that it is only the rules that matter, not the outcome. Real ideologies can be situational or they can explicitly ignore situations but both are ideologies all the same. Your assertion that "real ideology cannot be situational" is quite simply not true.
Couldn't you just have said "you made a mistake, because the number was over 10 years whereas your quotes numbers were over one year". Was all the insulting really necessary? Lucky you're AC so your comment didn't get seen.
how did companies ever exist before income tax was a thing???? it seems impossible to people who hold your views, yet, it happened and worked just fine
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Purchasers of Apple products in NZ would of paid GST so the NZ tax dept didn't totally miss out on its share.
12.5% which is more than most american states
There are plenty of other taxes aside from income tax. It's a bit frustrating to see how quickly "no income tax" gets transmuted to "no tax". Surely Apple is paying a lot of other taxes in NZ besides income tax. Not sales tax, as already discussed, except on purchases made by Apple in NZ. Property tax, etc.
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Or maybe NZ doesn't have 900million farmers. Describing tax as a per capita rather than per revenue or per sale is just utterly stupid.
It's almost as if countries don't have the capacity to pass laws to deter tax evasion. If the evidence is there that a corporation is skirting the law, the government should take measures to seize assets of the offending corporation, after due process, of course.
The only way Apple, and others, will stop this practice is when it gets too expensive for them to do it. Make it expensive.
Seriously, you can do better.
the % does not matter, only total dollar amount. and frankly, other countries need to step up
Bullshit. Percentage matters a great deal. I'm much more impressed by someone who donates 2% of their income to help those in need than someone who donates 0.19% (the actual number for the US) The US is the one that needs to step up. Buy fewer tanks that the military doesn't want and do something actually helpful with the money. And yes, foreign aid does help the US. It's a form of soft power.
The US pays 22% of the NATO budget so the EU countries pick up over 75% of the cost. NATO benefits the US as it serves primarily as a deterrent to Russia. The fact that the US elects to spend WAY more money on its military than any other country in the world is not the fault of the other NATO member states.
You really aren't reading what he's saying.
Here's a clue: The taxes the corporation pays, is money coming from the customer. If you think the corporation ever pays taxes out of their own coffers without making a deliberate decision to price goods underneath the total cost to bring them to market (including taxes) you have no idea how a company (or an economy) operates.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The shareholders do pay taxes on their profit. It's called "Capital Gains tax"
So... why do they pay taxes, like people? That an artificial entity composed of paper should not be required to pay the productivity penalty that governments impose on humans seems about right to me.
Might makes right irrelevant.
Story says the NZ figure is over the past 10 years.
That's easy. Back then, the companies had their own armies, took their own territory and collected money from their own subjects, to pay for wars against other companies. See also: the colonization of India and the US.
The trick between then and now was to get governments to commit to the wars, without giving the government any money to pay for the wars.
after you subtract all the taxes (GST, payroll, excise tax, etc) that they DO pay.
There are no payroll or excise taxes in NZ. Apple pay no tax. It's quite simple.
A lot of money spent on Apple products, only stupid people buy apple products, therefore a lot of idiots.
A sales (GST) tax is charged on all purchases. I think it's 15%. So, $630,000,000 is collected on 4.2 Billion in sales.
That is 4.2B profit is over the last decade, not financial year. $93 (NZD) per capita doesn't sound extraordinary.
$0.
New Zealand has one of the most open economies in the world.
We dont have import tariffs , we dont have corporate tax subsidies or any of the other shenanigans other countries use to raise the price of imports
Sales taxes are paid ONLY by the end consumer, businesses can claim GST (sales taxes) back.
Businesses are only obligated to collect sales taxes from end consumers and pass them on.
No, they should pay the same taxes as if they were a local company.
OR, the could pay based on what they believe their intellectual property (copyright,patent,trade name) is worth to them, or better yet what NZ believes its worth to them. If they don't pay then they have no legal rights.
Just as Chinese laws don't apply to US citizens, US laws dont apply to people/companies here in New Zealand. Apple can take the stance they are 100% outside of NZ and therefore don't believe they have to pay taxes, but equally they have should have no legal protection/rights here in NZ.
Apple will quickly realise that 70% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Oh, and we have every open importation laws too, so if Apple ups its prices, businesses will buy from overseas and parallel import, so we will STILL get Apple products at a competitive rate. And is Apple has no presence here in NZ, they have should have no legal standing either.
Its pay your taxes or bugger off
No, because that store worker is a citizen and they are protected by the law.
But Final Cut Pro and all the other Apple software, THAT would have no protection
And here is the funny part "We would pay Apple as much as we legally have to", $0.
If the "legally have to" is all that is important, then corporations should have no complaints, after all thats their stance.
The 4.2 billion figure was over multiple years, not annual.
That $4.2 billion figure is not "per year", it's counted over some unspecified multi-year period. Because headlines.
So in your crusade for our welfare, you will agree that all companies should pay 100% tax on profits.
And, since the salaries of all the employees, including the board and directors, are paid by us too, you will be fighting to have their salaries negotiated with all customers so that we pay the least and not ripped off by this extra overhead that they pass on to us, their customer.
Right?
I'm not sure leaving wealth in corporations is necessarily bad. That means the owners of the company, not the employees (including the executives) have it.
It's bad because if you don't tax it it becomes a vehicle for avoiding or deferring taxes. If I'm a wealthy guy and we don't tax the profits (or revenues) of my company then I have every incentive to use that company as a savings account for money I don't immediately need. Avoiding taxes without taxing corporations becomes trivial. If we don't tax those profits at either the individual level (like in S-Corps) or at the corporate level (like in C-Corps) then you will see a stampede of people using corporations to dodge taxes altogether to the detriment of us all. No wealthy person would ever have to pay a dime of tax if we didn't tax corporations and that's not a good thing at all.
And who owns the corporation? The investors. Who are they? Well, they could be anyone with a 401k or a pension. Or an employee. Or an executive. Or a C-level officer. Or a venture capitalist.
There is a huge difference between being a passive shareholder through a 401K and having enough of a stake in the company to actually influence company decisions. Technically both are "owners" of the company but their level of influence and control is far difference.
And while the 1% can try to get laws passed, we've seen money doesn't necessarily equal electoral victory.
No but a lack of money almost always ensures an electoral loss. Money doesn't cause a victory but it correlates heavily with one.
Apple DOES have a presence, they are a registered company, that is a legal presence.
I assessed there is no requirement to have an office, staff, or store to function as a company , LOTs of companies operate this way. All it requires is to be registered as a company and to have a legal address of service, both requirements Apple has. In addition to this Apple also have a New Zealand tax ID.
Apple sells both direct to the consumer and via 3rd parties. I do know this, you should have found out first before making up the question.
Colgate-Palmolive manufactures in New Zealand
But yes, I believe ALL companies must pay taxes on their profits they make in New Zealand.
Tax Corporation Revenues, Not Profits; http://news.yahoo.com/warren-b...
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