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.

Comments

Why?

[Lynal]

Can any corporate finance experts explain why companies would do this? Should we buy that they're just being generous/trying to foster goodwill?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It gives the politicians who give away massive amounts of wealth to the corporations a simple talking point.

Re: Why?

[slasher999]

BINGO! Precisely it. This is about employee retention above all else. Those of us of a certain age have seen this in the IT industry prior to Y2K. Back then we were seeing bonuses randomly throughout the year several times more than Apple is giving here, and it was a check instead of stock.

Re:Why?

[fluffernutter]

Bonuses are the new raise. Because they can get immediate recognition for it, and then conveniently forget to give it ever again.

Re:Why?

[dgatwood]

It gives the politicians who give away massive amounts of wealth to the corporations a simple talking point.

That's why this move makes very little sense. I've never thought of anybody in Apple's upper echelons as being a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination.

There must be some tax advantage to doing this. Either that or they're bleeding people to Tesla, Google, and Facebook. Or both.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It gives the politicians who give away massive amounts of wealth to the corporations a simple talking point.

WTF?!?!!?

NOT TAKING from the people being governed is now "giv[ing] away massive amounts of wealth"?

So if I don't rob you at gunpoint, I gave you the contents of your wallet?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Re:Why?

[cascadingstylesheet]

It gives the politicians who give away massive amounts of wealth to the corporations a simple talking point.

That's why this move makes very little sense. I've never thought of anybody in Apple's upper echelons as being a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination.

Quite right, they aren't. Puzzling, isn't it?

Maybe ... just maybe ... a better tax environment is better for business, which is better for paid non-governmental employment. Maybe wascally wepubwicans aren't as awful as you thought.

"After" is carrying a lot of water here

[American AC in Paris]

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.

Re:Impossible. RUSSIANS.

[The Cynical Critic]

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.