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Apple Gives Employees $2,500 Bonuses After New Tax Law (bloomberg.com)
Apple told employees that it's issuing a bonus of $2,500 of restricted stock units, following the introduction of the new U.S. tax law. "The iPhone maker will begin issuing grants to most employees worldwide in the coming months," reports Bloomberg. Apple also announced today that it would bring back most of its cash from overseas and spend $30 billion in the U.S. over the next five years. From the report: Apple confirmed the bonuses in response to a Bloomberg inquiry Wednesday. The Cupertino, California-based company joins a growing list of American businesses that have celebrated the introduction of corporate-friendly tax law with one-time bonuses for staff. AT&T, Comcast, JetBlue, and Wal-Mart also said they were giving bonuses.
Can any corporate finance experts explain why companies would do this? Should we buy that they're just being generous/trying to foster goodwill?
Oh wait...this is GOOD news...must be because of Obama still LMAO!
The combined income of the employees walmart has laid off since that announcement substantially dwarfs the "bonus" offered. The "bonus" was to people who had worked for Walmart for at least 20 years, btw. A pretty sad group.
I bet none.
Calling Bullshit on this. Bullshit!
Of course you could cite credible sources and prove your case.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
So far, every single company that has announced employee bonuses thanks to the tax bill has followed with an announcement of layoffs shortly afterward. In some cases, the dollar savings of the layoffs almost exactly matched the dollar cost of the bonuses.
If I was an Apple employee, I would polish up my resume. Also, I wouldn't spend those Apple Bonus Bux just yet, since it's coming in the form of restricted stock instead of a $2500.00 check.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The full $1K was for people that had worked there 20 year. People who had worked there for fewer years received a lesser bonus but still got something. I think 2 years was the minimum. And by the way, Walmart would have laid off those people either way.
Pure BS! Apple has been sitting on yuuuuge piles of cash for many years. They could have given bonuses etc. to employees all that time.
It's as is you don't spend your cash if your cash-pile is only 7 miles high, but do when it hits 8. All these cash-rich companies announcing bonuses are just spreading trickle-down propaganda.
The Kansas tax-cut experiment has shown that general tax cuts hurt the budget far more than they help the economy, if any. The real test for this new "experiment" will be when a recession hits and we need a rainy-day infusion. What happened to all the fiscal conservatives who were so vocal before T?
Table-ized A.I.
LMFAO enjoy paying absurd prices for 3 year old technology being passed off as new. Enjoy security measures that were upended by simply typing root. Bless your heart.
Don't fool yourself. Apple is in this for Apple's profits, not for republicans, democrats or even you, except where they can dip into your wallet.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So could you.
I could, but I didn't make the clam. It is up to him to prove his case. Not for me to disprove it. The clam has been made, now I'm requesting to look at the data.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
What's worse, making less than (I assume you mean US) minimum wage in a factory in China, or making almost nothing working on a farm in China?
Also keep in mind that whatever machine you are currently using to write your post was probably made by the same factory workers in China making almost nothing. At least, most of the parts were.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
So ... those hipsters with their flavored coffee are ... Republicans?
Wow, I was away too long.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thats only 2â(TM)500 if you are an apple user.
Quite a letdown from the $350 billion in the last slashdot story.
Someone seems to have more mod points than sense.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
actually it's both of your jobs to prove your claims. You claim it's bullshit, so you need to defend your stance. While the other must also defend the stance of it not being bullshit.
So much winning!
I bet your fun at partys.
No, the person making the claim needs to prove it.
If someone claims something about you, you don't have to prove it wrong, you don't have to do anything just because some person says it.
I hope you educate yourself more next time before typing such daft garbage.
There are a million reasons I can think of.
If all you can do is ascribe selfish reasons to any action, then here is one for you - with some many companies having more money to spend, there were be a lot more poaching of workers going on, and companies are trying to head defection off at the pass by fostering goodwill among employees.
But again only for absolutely selfish reasons, could not be they are just passing along some good fortune to those that helped them get where they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ask me how I know you've gone mental with liberal hate.
Ok, here's how I know - because the story is about APPLE. not WALMART.
APPLE just announced they are hiring 200k employees over the next five years and spending tens of billions more in the US, since they can finally bring money back from overseas. There are no layoffs.
Meanwhile in completely unrelated news WALMART is just one of many companies giving out bonuses, that just happens to also be laying off some workers. That does not change the benefit of what they are doing for the workers. Nor even does it recognize the reality of a company like Walmart being so large they have different cost centers...
There are many, many companies giving out bonuses and most of them are not doing layoffs. That they are giving out bonuses is mostly a good sign they will be hiring soon.
You seriously need to re-think your life at this point, four more years of good news will literally eat your brain and leave you destitute and unable to cope with life. Why would good news do that to anyone? Don't let it happen to you man.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is three, out of over 100.... the original claim was "every" company giving bonuses was doing layoffs.
So, #FakeNews (aka Bullshit)
That list was before Apple too. Looks like the wave continues, and Apple alone is hiring 200k people over the next five years. Again when you say "every" company is doing layoffs in the very story where the company giving bonuses is hiring... well, #FakeNews.
Thanks Trump! (I added that last part just for you to enjoy).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
feeding the supply side doesn't really do much. Companies don't hire because you give them money. They hire because they have more demand. And they pay more because they need to keep talent; and the reason for that is other companies are poaching their workers.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Obviously, a zero percent income tax rate will result in zero income tax revenue. Just as obviously, a 100% tax rate (the government takes your ENTIRE paycheck) will result in roughly zero tax revenue - most people won't work a job if they don't get to take home a paycheck. Also companies wouldn't have any reason to.pay more than minimum wage - employees don't demand more because they don't get any of it anyway.
So we can see that tax rates too low result in little or no revenue, and we can see that tax rates too high result in little or no revenue. That's obvious even without understanding the basics of economics, without even knowing the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics, for example.
If the current tax rate is 80%, that hurts revenue and reducing the tax rate to 70% will increase revenue. If it's at 2%, increasing the rate to 10% will increase revenue. So what we can see, without even reading Chapter 1 of Economics 101 is that anyone who says "increasing tax rates increases revenue" is an idiot, and anyone who says "decreasing tax rates increases revenue" is similarly clueless. There is an optimal rate, not near 100% and not near 0%, that maximizes revenue. Raising rates above the optimal rate hurts revenue, reducing them below the optimal rate reduces revenue.
Also, complex tax laws create "compliance costs". Small businesses file taxes about sixteen times per year - quarterly federal returns, quarterly sales tax returns, quarterly unemployment tax returns, annual business personal property tax returns, etc. There is a real cost to all that, even of the business only owes $1, that's a lot of tax paperwork. (I've filed returns for 12 cents before - the cost / time to fill them out was much greater than 12 cents, so the current situation is a significant net loss for the economy.)
Corporate tax rates follow the same reasoning. If you taxed them at 100%, nobody would invest their savings into starting or growing any companies, since they can't make money. The economy would come to a halt and there would be no revenue (and nearly 100% unemployment). On the other hand, with a 0% corporate tax, you have no revenue from corporate taxes, but higher savings and investment, much better returns from your 401k, lower unemployment, higher wages, etc. So again there is an optimum rate. Too high hurts revenue, and too low hurts revenue. Too high also hurts a lot of other things. Fortunately, corporate taxes have been around for many years, many different rates in many different countries, so economists and policy makers can see how each worked. Based on the data, most countries optimize their revenue by setting corporate tax rates at about half of what the US has had. A few countries have tried very high corporate tax rates. A corporate tax rate of nearly 100%, where the government takes all the profits, is called communism. The USSR tried that. China tried that for a while and reversed course before they ended up like the USSR.
So I read the linked article, and I couldn't help but notice that the only thing joining the tax law and Apple's bonuses was temporal proximity. The author conspicuously chooses to use words like "after" and "following the introduction of," assiduously avoiding the more concrete "because of." The author also doesn't attribute anything the company actually stated to the tax law, citing instead some phoney-baloney hogwash about "confidence in Apple’s future."
In fact, if you read the text of the email sent by Tim Cook to Apple employees, you don't see mention of tax policy anywhere--which is weird, seeing as Bloomberg puts "New Tax Law" right in the headline.
It's almost as if Bloomberg.com were blowing smoke up our collective asses and calling it an invigorating Goop.com vapor colonic.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Republican tax cuts are evil!. Millions will die. Even though the standard deduction doubles, those who make minimum wage will starve as the rich will laugh eating there bones!
Wow, you're stupid.
These companies are doing this to sucker the plebeians into thinking they are getting something good. Voodoo Economics is horse manure, and always has been. Wait until the personal cuts expire. Those will be "fun" times.
Of course you could cite credible sources and prove your case.
Credile source #1
Among that group of employees, only those who have worked for Walmart for 20 years or more will get the full $1,000, Walmart told Business Insider.
Credible source #2
The bonuses will be determined by an employee's length of service. Those workers with more than 20 years of experience will qualify to receive the full $1,000. However, workers with less than two years of experience will receive $200, a Walmart spokesman told CNBC.
Credible source #3
A one-time bonus benefiting all eligible full and part-time hourly associates in the U.S. The amount of the bonus will be based on length of service, with associates with at least 20 years qualifying for $1,000. A discrete one-time charge will be taken in the fourth quarter of the current year to account for the bonus; qualification will be determined before the end of the month and payments will be paid as quickly as practical thereafter.
As to the difference between the income of those laid off and the bonuses, this article cites the bonuses will cost $400 million. This article says 9,400 people are being let go during the layoffs. Simple math shows $400 million/9,400 = 42,553. If we assume those being laid off made that much in salary and benefits, then after one year, the amount of money saved by laying off those people will dwarf the one-time bonus amount.
That's not true. Our corporate tax rates were about the same as Germany's and Japan's if you factor in loopholes actually used. Those are the two top-performing democracies in the world, besides US. If their rates are somehow "sub-optimal", it didn't hurt them enough to knock them from the top two positions.
Now, I'm not necessarily against lowering our corporate tax rates some, but we have to be mindful of the budget deficit. Fix that FIRST. And, GOP didn't have to lower personal tax rates for the rich. Their priorities are out of whack.
Table-ized A.I.
More probably than not they're just trying to get all the EU profits they didn't pay any taxes on back home as quickly as possible on now after the EU knows about this after someone blew the whistle on their illegal and secret deal with the Irish.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Everyone knows Will Wright and Herman Cain had it right... Nine! Nine! Nine!
God help you all. You need it.
remember who to thank when we have to pay
Why would we have to pay anything? It's on Apple. And other companies...
Apple alone is paying $38 billion in taxes to bring cash back to the US.
And (in the article) it notes Apple plans to spend over $350 billion in the U.S. over the next five years thanks to all of the cash it can bring back. All of that spending will also be taxed... along with the 200k employees Apple plans to hire.
Apple is not the only company in this same boat, many others have stashed funds overseas waiting until the taxes were low enough to bring back cash. So that is vast sums freed for spending in the U.S. which again will bring in a Yuge amount of tax revenue.
It's not "Free money". It's "Freed Money". It's been liberated from the cellar, allowed to see the light of day and explore the world at last, where it can finally do some good.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The evidence is self-evident on the claim of bullshit. -- The op did not back up his/her claim.
Keep in mind that a bullshitter isn't necessarily wrong, just misrepresenting the certainty of the claim.
Oblig. wiki reference
So they are stealing money from âzoberseasâoe tax payers like me by transfering money to the US from where it was earned. Fuck you Mr. President and those who donât take action in the EU
So you're a big company, and you don't want trouble from the government. Of course you're going to do something, if you can, to make yourself look good!
But notice how all these announcements are about bonuses, not pay raises. A bonus is just a one-time event, pay raises keep on giving, month after month. These companies aren't really putting their money where their mouth is, they just want to make a splash in the news.
This makes good sense. Apple's getting a windfall from the tax law changes and they're spreading the good cheer. Some of that money goes to employees which makes employees more loyal and more likely to stay and do well at Apple. Most of that money will likely go to Apple's research and development and other initiatives that drive their company. A lot of that spending will be in the USA which is why the politicians wanted to make the change to the laws. This brings home (to the USA) a lot of cash. Good for the USA. Maybe not so good for some other countries. Winners and Losers in everything.
Yup. The common reason to hire more workers is if your company is expanding. And they never hire more workers than they actually need. In boom times they may make less prudent hiring decisions (witness the dotcom), but generally they're always paying attention to the bottom line. Extra revenue coming from company growth is likely to mean they want to expand. But extra revenue coming from a tax break is different - it doesn't mean the company is growing, they don't have a larger market, they haven't reduced their operating expanses, the margins remain the same. So it's highly likely that in this case that extra revenue will be funneled back to the investors and shareholders.
Now the tax cuts may help a few businesses survive that otherwise wouldn't. That's a good thing. But the giant increase in the deficit probably balances that out. A deficit can hurt a business as well as they may feel pressure to provide more servicesm to employees (growing health care costs, a better retirement plan, etc).
Some of these corporations recognize that people are going to boot the GOP candidates out if the tax cuts don't "trickle down" as promised. And knowing full well that "trickle down" isn't the effect it's been sold to be, they are manually doing a little trickle down in order to keep the pitchforks at bay.
If my boss doesn't give generous bonuses, they're a greedy scumbag. If they give generous bonuses, they do it for party politics, employee retention and to make themselves look good.
for one will enjoy my bonus and not be jaded AF about it.
Yup, that will do it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Dubai is one of the fastest growing economies through heavy investment into business with a 0% business tax, 0 capital gains tax and a mere 5% sales tax on imported items.
Seems like our government is finally learning what it means to grow an economy, cut taxes for businesses and let them repatriate money.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Bonuses..not raises.
In fact some companies are giving out raises... including WalMart, so that report of WalMart saving more in layoffs than they spend in bonuses is kind of #FakeNews since as you point out, raises will be around forever.
But also even those not giving out raises - the employees get raises ANYWAY because withholding from each paycheck will be lower. People all over the US are seeing higher paychecks now, because of the supposedly deadly tax bill passing...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since nobody wants to actually do a simplistic google search that takes all of 2 seconds, here's a source about it.
It is part bullshit, part not. The bonus of 1000 dollars for employees is only given in full to those who are part of that sad little 20yr group. Those who have worked 2 years or less (probably the majority of Walmart employees) will only get 200 or so.
This is about employee retention above all else
IT IS ALL TRUMP'S FAULT !!
He is the one to blame for companies having to beg their employees to stay !!!
More probably than not they're just trying to get all the EU profits they didn't pay any taxes on back home as quickly as possible on now after the EU knows about this after someone blew the whistle on their illegal and secret deal with the Irish.
Let me ask a serious question:
Is there ANYTHING that Apple could, or would, do in ANY scenario that you would NOT find a way to find a way to spin-negatively?
Seriously.
And they call that a bonus?
I'll bet the execs get unrestricted stock.
Same BS, different decade.
I was an engineer in the 90s and got stock options the day my company went public. The tee shirt I got on that day ended up worth more than the stock.
If it isn't cash, it's worthless. Don't accept this BS in lieu of money or even actual stock. It's a PR gimmick.
More probably than not they're just trying to get all the EU profits they didn't pay any taxes on back home as quickly as possible on now after the EU knows about this after someone blew the whistle on their illegal and secret deal with the Irish.
What kind of idiot would come up with the idea that you wouldn't need to pay taxes if you moved the money out out country (or continent)? Not to mention that the EU doesn't tax anybody nor anycorporation.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
So Eliminate the loopholes, and make the tax rate the actual tax rate.
Loopholes mean a overly complex tax rate, which increases the compliance cost. It also means that you actively need to hunt for the loopholes, which means that you are actively *punished* if you do not have a "overpriced" tax lawyer. For example, Apple isn't doing anything that any other company isn't doing, yet Apple is being accused of tax evasion?
People, and corporations are being incentivized to try to lower their tax burden.
So reverse that, make the tax rate the actual tax rate. No loop holes means a more accurate understanding of what is actually being collected (no 25% here, 20% over there, etc), and no evasion. It's more fair.
Watch the techie heads explode like a 60's scifi robot caught in a contradiction, lol :)
Must love Apple ... must hate Trump ... must love Apple ... error, error ...
There is an optimal rate, not near 100% and not near 0%, that maximizes revenue. Raising rates above the optimal rate hurts revenue, reducing them below the optimal rate reduces revenue.
Indeed.
And as I think you touch on later, we might want to optimize for things other than revenue too. Optimal revenue might not be optimal for economic growth, employment, etc. for example. Revenue is not the only variable we should care about :)
Corporate taxes tend to result in downward pressure on wages and to a lesser degree dividends to shareholders.
The above-titled report from the Congressional Budget Office has this to say about the corporate income tax:
A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the
corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced
returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that
consumers pay for the products the company produces. Understanding the mechanisms
through which those tax burdens are transferred is crucial in determining the
economic effects of the corporate income tax.
Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly
who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies
highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical
estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies
yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on
stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than
on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o The long-term burden of corporate or dividend taxation is unlikely to
rest fully on corporate equity, because it will remain there only if
marginal investment is not affected by those taxes. Most economists
believe that the corporate tax system has some effect on investment
decisions.
o Most evidence from closed-economy, general-equilibrium models
suggests that given reasonable parameters, the long-term incidence of
the corporate tax falls on capital in general.
o In the context of international capital mobility, the burden of the
corporate tax may be shifted onto immobile factors (such as labor or
land), but only to the degree that the capital and outputs of different
countries can be substituted.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to
labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
That's been my normal response, too.
"If you lower corporate taxes, companies will use that money to hire more people!"
Why? If hiring more people will increase revenue by more than the cost of those employees, then the company will hire more people. If revenue won't increase by more than the cost of the employees, then the company won't hire them. The only ways that lowering corporate taxes will change that is if it's payroll taxes that are being lowered or if the increase in revenue is questionable enough that the slightly higher profits from the lower tax rate makes the company more willing to take the risk. In either case, the difference is probably so small that it would have very little impact on employment rates compared to all of the other factors that contribute to the overall economy.
With most Walmart and Samsclub employees making near minimum wage, and many of them being part time with no major benefits, $42,500/yr is probably quite high.
Apple's tax bill for bringing all that money home will be nearly $40 billion. That's not chump change - even to the federal govt. You Progressives should all have hard-ons for that.
Deficit doubled under bush too.
So, the consumer-squeezing decisions and double-downs and bad practices? Doing the thing that we screamed about at the time. Your answer is "Yes", doing The Thing won't be down-spun.
But for every example I would bring up, you would be sitting there. Sitting there with the expectancy of a 5 year old posed to leap after asking the ever-clever "Why not?", prepared with your own spin of why Apple made the Right Choice, did the Right Thing, and I'm wrong.
So, no, I'm not going to pick a specific -gate for you, oh precious 5yo.
Politicians can't resist creating laws that reward or punish specific behaviors (often with side-effects). Asking them to change that habit would be like asking them to balance budgets and think long-term. Expecting to fix human nature is asking too much. Reduce such behavior a bit perhaps, but without DNA changes, it will be minor.
But either way, my point about average tax rates stands.
Table-ized A.I.
You make it sound like a cut-and-dry science. It's not: economists heavily debate it. (If you have cut-and-dry science, please reference it.) Further, it should be weighed against other factors, such as the budget deficit and its impact on recessions and future recoveries.
Based on the data, most countries optimize their revenue by setting corporate tax rates at about half of what the US has had.
Most industrialized countries had the same corporate tax rate as the US after deductions.
What most economists wanted was for the US to lower its corporate tax rate while eliminating (or reducing) many of the deductions. What the bill did is lower the corporate tax rate while keeping the deductions.
I stole this Sig
Also, most multinationals pay less than the new 21% corporate rate.
Yes, but now they will have to pay even less than they were, so they will still have more money. And no-one was escaping the previous recapture tax, which all companies get to enjoy the benefit of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While agree with what you say, I would also so it's uncontroversial that this optimal rate is a fickle things. It changes over time and depends on things like the current rate, so probably whatever rate you pick this year is not optimal next year. However, I think your larger point stands and it's not worth dwelling on how to optimize since it's probably not the right thing for the government's tax goal to be be maximum revenue.
Chris Mesterharm
There's more to it than just employee retention.
1) You'll notice that many of the companies that offered the bonuses were also companies that inverted. They're bringing cash back from overseas and have to do something with it.
2) Corporations were collectively buying popularity of the tax bill in order to get it to pass. They know that long term they will come out way ahead with the new tax plan vs the one time investment in their own staff. A little good PR never hurts either.
3) If the corporate rate is hiked again, there will be hell to pay economically. Companies will cut staff and wages, and the market will also respond negatively. If there is a change in 2020 it will be the first thing dems try to attack.
Why?
The answer is in General Equilibrium, rather than limiting one's approach to Demand Side (i.e., Keynesian) or Supply Side thinking.
In competition, firms keep producing while marginal cost (the cost o making the next unit) is less than the marginal revenue (increased revenue from another unit [which is price in a purely competitive market, and somewhat less than price]).
Tax is one of the costs of production, as it is based on accounting profits. Produce and sell another unit, and it's a bit more tax.
If you decrease the "price" of any "input", including tax, the marginal cost of the next unit decreases by that amount--and suddenly it makes sense to produce more.
"Making sense to produce more" can be translated as "demand for all other inputs increases". The firm now wants more capital, and more labor.
This increased demand will increase both the price (i.e., wage) *and* the quantity demanded (number of workers or hours used) .
It has nothing to do with "corporations having more money". It all comes down to the changed costs of production. That is, it's not the total tax payed by the company, but rather what happens in producing the next unit that matters.
If a company simply received a lump sum grant of the same amount as its taxes go down, the behavior would be quite different, and production would not change, and therefore wages and hours would not change, etc.
All the interesting stuff in Economics happens at the margin :)
doc hawk
At least some people benefit.
remember when Intel, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Adobe were hit with a class action suit for suppressing wages and conspiring not to poach each other's talent?
i got at $12,000 payout from that settlement as I worked for one of the companies and signed my name.
but i also didn't get a raise for 5 years while at said company, only the top-5% performers (and middle management in some "key" groups) got raises those years.
even the "satisfactory" 4% inflation-matchin raises i lost meant my net loss was ~$45,000
so yeah, fuck apple. fuck all of them.
Apple gets awesome tax breaks for years to come, gives a small one-time bonus....If their tax-breaks are never-ending, then why are they giving a one-time bonus instead giving proper raises? Similarly, individual taxpayer breaks deflate to almost nothing after just a couple years, while, again, the corporate tax breaks don't decrease. Companies figured out how to screw you over in such a way that you smile and thank them for it.
The combined income of the employees walmart has laid off since that announcement substantially dwarfs the "bonus" offered. The "bonus" was to people who had worked for Walmart for at least 20 years, btw. A pretty sad group.
Isn't what you just described exactly what happens when minimum wages are raised? People are given pay wages but so many people are also cut from their jobs. Libs never mention that second part.
There are in fact people whose taxes will go up, big-time, as a result of the new tax code.
One group that will get it in particular are Apple employees in California.
California has high state taxes, high property taxes, and high housing prices which lead to high mortgages and high interest payments on them.
All of those used to be deductible on federal taxes.
All of those deductions are either eliminated, or capped at a level that bites California residents hard.
People with Apple engineer level salaries will see their federal taxes go up by thousands next year.
Apple may be in part cushioning this blow.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It is not that someone can't or won't do a "simple" google search. It's the fact that my google search will yield different results from the OP. Google search results change by the hour, or even by the minute. Even if I knew the exact search terms he used to get his information that doesn't mean I will be looking at the exact same article.
By asking for him to cite his links I'm looking at the exact same data he is.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Did you learn this infinite wisdom in your MBA program?
There is no golden rule for why anyone does anything.
The politicians did NOT give away ANY money here... they simply said "we will take less money from you" to these companies.
Try to stop confusing the following two things:
Subsidy: Stealing money from entity A and giving it to entity B
Tax cut: Stealing less from entity B
And, yes, I use "stealing" in both examples because it is done at gunpoint. Thought experiment to illustrate:
Try not paying your taxes - the government will first contact you to tell you how serious they are about taking your money.
Try resisting their pleas - the government will take your money by other means like garnishing your wages, taking your bank account, or taking your home.
Try resisting these other means - the government will show up with guns to arrest you.
Try resisting the arrest - the government will shoot you.
DO NOT ACTUALLY TRY THE EXPERIMENT., I'll not be blamed for your death.
A robber in a back alley is more honest: he immediately pulls the gun, admitting very clearly that this is a money-or-your-life "transaction". Actually, after he "taxes" you once, he will probably never "tax" you again. Government likes to cloud things up so you are less-likely to object, since government is trying to rob millions at once and if those millions all reasist at once you have armed resistance and revolution.
Walmart was gonna have to pay out that bonus anyway, you mean. It was a negotiated thing from earlier in 2017. We know what's up. Both you and walmart want to make your GOP scumbags look like heroes when they clearly are not. How you got modded up may forever be a mystery. (it's probably sockpuppets)
Not because of this tax bill which is what they claimed. The minimum wage is only going up in states that were forcing a higher wage through legislation. They were gonna pay this anyway. The bonuses were a union negotiated item from 2017. They were also going to have to pay this. What they actually did is use that claim to distract from the shitty cuts, layoffs, and store closures that they shifted to their Sam's Club division. There is nothing good and altruistic about anything walmart is doing here.
> Apple has been sitting on yuuuuge piles of cash for many years. They could have given bonuses etc. to employees all that time.
They could have, and did - outside the US. Bringing the money into the US and paying bonuses to US employees would have been stupid, though, because the US is the only major country in the world that harshly penalized bringing money in. If Apple brought that money, which they've already paid taxes on, into the US, the US govt would take over a third of it, 35%. It would be stupid for Apple to give $35 billion to the US govt and $65 billion to US employees when they could instead give $100 billion to European employees.
Now that the penalty for bringing money to the US has been greatly reduced, Apple plans to bring in $250 billion, on which they will pay $38 billion additional tax. That will generate roughly another $250 billion in economic activity. (When Apple pays a construction company, the construction company pays construction workers and suppliers, who in turn buy things with the money, so the same money keeps getting spent and taxed over and over until it's all gone to either the government or another country. ) So something like $500 billion added to the economy, and maybe $100 billion of that will get sent to China or wherever buying Chinese goods. $400 billion will be spent and re-spent in the US until it's all absorbed by taxes.
To give you a sense of scale, the federal deficit is a bit over $400 billion. So just this one company, Apple, is bringing in enough money to cover the entire federal deficit for the year. This by using an understanding of basic arithmetic when making policy, rather than operating purely on jealousy.
Itâ(TM)s not Apple. Apple is evil. Give credit where itâ(TM)s due. Its time to admit Trump knows what he is doing.
Apple would not have done this if not for Trump. You need to face the reality.
Awesome, so those employees will be able to pay for all the govmint services that will not longer be available, like roads and social security.
Fallacy type: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. Look it up here if you don't already know what this is.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.