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."

Comments

Re:That's their job

[serviscope_minor]

Indeed. How many individuals "do the right thing" and pay extra taxes beyond what they are legally required to pay?

Many.

Over here (the UK) there's all sorts of weird shennanigans you can pull if you put in the effort by contacting via offshore companies, and every so often you hear about people in the news doing so. Such things are available to everyone in principle. Most people don't do that and simply take salary the normal way and pay taxes the normal way.

Most people don't "like" paying taxes and grumble about them except that we all like our smoothly operating first world country with a high standard of living. Combine the awkwardness of actually setting up such a scheme legally with the vague feeling of unease many people get due to not being psychopaths and realising that not paying their fair share is bad and the result is most people pay a reasonable amount of tax.

It is not Apple's fault that NZ has dumb tax laws.

See this is why we can't have nice things. It's very hard to set up laws that allow reasonable business things and can't be abused. Because of scum like Amazon, now every small company has to deal with the horror of VATMOSS. Your idea to fix the laws is great and all but it will hit every single company that legitimately licenses IP of various sorts from abroad in a perfectly normal, non tax dodging way.

The only fiduciary duty that company directors have is to not fuck up egregiously or with intent. You can check the case law if you like, but until you can provide a reference where someone actually won a lawsuit over breach of fiduciary duty for merely not maximizing profits, I won't accept such a duty exists. There's also duties in many countries about public good as well.

Someone, somewhere chose to dodge those taxes. Just because they were able to get away with it doesn't mean it wasn't their fault. Ultimately people are responsible for their actions.