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Apple Argued That Buildings at Its Headquarters Were Worth $200, Not $1B, To Reduce Its Tax Bill: Report (sfchronicle.com)
Apple argued that buildings it owned around Cupertino, where it is headquartered, were only worth $200 instead of the $1 billion tax assessors deemed in 2015, according to appeals reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. From a report: The report characterized the dispute as part of an aggressive strategy by Apple to lower its tax bills. According to the Chronicle, Apple has 489 open appeals in tax disputes over property assessed at $8.5 billion in Santa Clara County, Calif., dating back to 2004. Those appeals include the $1 billion building assessed by tax officials, as well as another $384 million property that Apple also claims is worth $200. Apple is now valued at $1 trillion. It is also the county's biggest taxpayer, paying $56 million in the 2017-2018 tax year.
If you read the article, Apple didn't say that its HQ was worth $200. From SF Chronicle article:
Some claims reflect extreme differences in estimated values. In one appeal filed in 2015, Apple said that a cluster of properties in and around Apple Park
in Cupertino that the assessor valued at $1 billion was worth just $200. In another, property that the assessor valued at $384 million was, in Appleâ(TM)s view, worth $200, according to an appeal application
What are these properties? I don't know. I'd have to look at the appeal. It could be that the dispute is not over the HQ.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So the assessors who collect taxes are able to determine the value w/o any process to appeal if they are wrong? I don't think so. The truth is someplace between $200 and $1B, the question is where that is.
Apple has their view, the tax collector theirs and what the poster was asking for was independent analysis of the building's true worth for the purposes of the property taxes.
You can barely get a half decent shed for $200 yet you think that might be a reasonable valuation for a whole fucking campus while google says the median for just a house in san francisco is $1.6million.?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If both the buyer and seller agree on a valuation, that would be just compensation. Your example is based on the property having special value for Apple. Yet Apple themselves estimated its value as $200, which is their legal admission that it has very little value to them, special or not.
The campus is supposed to have cost $5 billion so tax on a $1 billion valuation is getting off cheap
Tax on the poor? Sure, but the poor pay property taxes too. You think rental owners don't pass that onto their tenants? The renting poor pay a share of property taxes too and have to do so even in bad times. Switching that to sales and income taxes would at least let the poor to reduce that equivalent tax payment when things get really tough (as you can't tax non-existent income and they can stop spending on non-essentials)
And you really think that, if property taxes are abolished, landlords will actually drop the prices correspondingly? And stop spending on non-essentials? The reason people argue that sale taxes are regressive is that the poor are already spending less of their money on non-essentials than wealthier people because most of their money already goes towards essentials. increase sales taxes and for a lot of people the situation doesn't become "oh, guess I have to hold onto my iphone for another year", it becomes "can I afford to eat dinner today".
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This is about a property evaluation 2015, three years ago. I find it interesting that the Chronicle article this is based on, and all of the articles parroting the Chronicle, conveniently leave out the result. When reporting on "Apple appealed the county's assessment three years ago", wouldn't it make sense to tell us how the appeal turned out?
I see that the current tax assessment for the Apple headquarters building is $398,600,000. It may be that Apple's value is closer to correct than the number the county initially tried to get them for.
Not even close. Given that Apple were claiming that a $384 million building was worth $200 (i.e. a factor of almost two million to one), it's far, *far* more literally close to owning an actual $13m Rolls Royce Sweptail and claiming it's a Hot Wheels toy version of that same Ford Fiesta.
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Off the top of my head, the City of Cupertino responds if there is a fire at Apple's $200 building and prevents it from being a complete loss by employing people to drive fire trucks that the City bought specifically for this purpose.
But hey, they are only out $200 right?
They also probably do other things like provide fresh water to that $200 building through convenient pipes, and take away sewage away through other convenient pipes. They have to maintain those pipes somehow, because pipes aren't magic objects that pop into existence where you need them, of the sizes needed.
Oh, and they maintain these crazy strips of asphalt that allow the workers to get to Apple's $200 building, so that Apple actually has people to design products to sell and make that Scrooge McDuck sized pile of money. Again, roads are not made of magic materials that you can wish into existence for free - it's real material that costs money to produce, and money to put that material in place. And more money to install traffic signals that keep the thousands of workers from that $200 building from having to deal with even worse traffic than they already do. And should a couple of those workers run their cars into each other on the City-owned roads, there's some more City employees that show up in City-owned vehicles (or perhaps from a City-contracted service) to provide emergency medical assistance. I think that one is called an "ambulance".
Please don't be daft.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It is also the county's biggest taxpayer, paying $56 million in the 2017-2018 tax year.
Let's see. Revenue of $229 billion for 2017 $.056 billion/ $229.23 billion = 0.02446% tax rate. Most individuals pay between 20-50% of their income (depending on the country). This is even more loony than the $200 campus. Can I buy your campus for $300 Apple -- you can make a 50% profit!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.