Whilst Apple Inc may be a US company it has subsidiary companies in the other countries/regions that it operates. Apple's earnings place 2/3rds of its income outside the US. Why should that income be subject to US tax when tax has already been paid in the region it was earned?
RTFA (NYT):
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.
It's certainly nothing compared to google's "We don't sell anything in the UK, it's all in Ireland, honest" bullshit.
No doubt Apple is being singled out as an example. So what? It's just congress bloviating. When they actually do something about this crap and don't apply it equally to companies in addition to Apple, then they'll be cause for complaint.
Personally, I'd rather pay higher property/income taxes and abandon corporate taxes so that money comes back into the country for reinvestment and so that the companies don't leave the country and expand their business elsewhere.
Sucker.
You're buying the line that companies will hold their breath until they turn blue if we enforce some of our corporate tax laws. It's like the "we'll offshore if you don't increase the H-1B quota" line. If they could move to a country with lower taxes or cheaper labor without endangering their business, then they would have already. In fact they've already done it as much as possible, so there are important business reasons to keep some of their operations in the US.
Additionally, "money comes back into the country for reinvestment" has already been shown not to work. That was the excuse the last time there was a tax holiday allowing companies to repatriate profits without paying taxes. They repatriated the money, didn't pay taxes, and didn't invest squat.
While I agree, at least in part, about our current government, I'm skeptical that Apple plays tax avoidance games as a form of protest against US government practices (other than the practice of collecting taxes from Apple and its C level execs).
To here members of our government continually bemoaning how the richest people and companies "owe" it more makes me sick. The richest person has two orders of magnitude less net worth than what the government makes in taxes each year.
So you contention is that the government should be viewed and treated as an individual? However far from perfect it is in practice, the government does provide some services for 308M people. You'll have a point when Apple takes on the same responsibility.
What seems unfair is the US government attempting to lay a claim to revenues that were generated by Apple's related entity in another country.
You're not an accountant, are you? Ask a decent accountant what profits were made and what expenses were incurred by your operations in country X, and he'll ask what you want them to be. There are endless games that can be played, like transfer pricing. And what about the profits that Apple claims were generated outside of any country. Does Apple have significant operations on ships in international waters? From the NYT article:
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.
That's a big "if". I can't accuse Apple of doing anything illegal because, despite the congressional investigation, it hasn't been investigated thoroughly enough. In recent years the IRS has actually reduced personnel for corporate tax enforcement. Investigating something as complex as the books of a company the size of Apple is not something you can do in an afternoon.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If the federal government doesn't investigate them of course they won't find anything. This is not like some murder that was committed in front of 10 witnesses, where it's obvious that a crime has been committed. Far worse than Apple is the approach that Obama (like his predecessor), and his associate crony Holder at the DOJ have taken toward the financial crisis: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Cover your eyes and you're guaranteed not to find anything.
However, my guess is that if Apple is guilty of anything, it doesn't fall into the criminal league. Still their books should be thoroughly investigated. Reporter David Cay Johnston has written that large companies' enormous cash hoards are a tax violation, because there are well established limits on cash that companies may hold without declaring it profit. In other words, it's tax evasion.
I take every tax deduction I can legally find, why shouldn't Apple?
A better question is why should these ridiculous tax avoidance games that Apple plays be legal.
Here's a practical instead of philosophical argument, or rather an appeal to fairness and reason (alien to lawyers, but perhaps not all Slashdotters). Software can already be copyrighted, but hardware (electronic or otherwise) cannot. Does it seem reasonable to provide software with two types of "intellectual property" protection? What else has that? Movies can also be copyrighted. Should we also allow a patent on all movies involving a boy and his dog?
By analogy, I we could build a personal scale that measures my weight precisely down to the milligram, provably beating all the other personal scales on the market. But that would be a waste of money because such precise measurements just aren't useful for most uses of personal scales.
Your analogy doesn't stand up. You're talking about taking a system that works quite well (typical bathroom scale) and needlessly refining it. Storm forecasting is, as you point out, not nearly as accurate as we would like or could use. Therefore it's worth trying to improve it. I don't think anyone can say exactly how much a new computer will help it, as there is some research. However, since Sandy alone cost 2600x as much as this new computer, it seems like it's worth trying.
I agree. Another way of looking at it is that the only thing that can make a program novel enough to patent is a new algorithm, but algorithms are not patentable.
only specific, newly invented machines are supposed to be patentable
And if the machine is implemented in software, the only thing that makes it novel and different from a bazillion other machines with the same physical implementation is the algorithms. You're not supposed to be able to patent those. Logically this means that algorithms implemented in hardware logic are unpatentable, which is fine. They shouldn't be patentable. However algorithms are not the be all and end all of logic design, let alone electronics in general. You could still patent a new memory cell design for example.
Wrong! Putting logic in hardware is nothing like executing it in software. You need to go back to elementary electronics and start learning the basics.
The OP didn't say putting logic in hardware is like executing it in software, he said it could be converted to hardware. If that's not supposed to be true, then I'm glad I apparently forget my elementary electronics, as I've taken signal processing software and converted it into something that does the same thing (only faster) in hardware.
The distinction between a physical machine and a physical machine running software is somewhat pointless.
That may be, but about the only thing can make a computer running program X novel enough to patent is the algorithms implemented by X. Hence you are essentially patenting an algorithm, which is not supposed to be allowed.
Damn. Is this why they make engineers take Intro to Philosophy courses? What about a Platonic ideal of a computer?
Slashdot Mirror
In case you haven't noticed the point here is that it's ungoverned, so it can't possibly be totalitarianism.
Sure it can be, but the folks with the AK-47's and RPG's aren't officially the government, so libertarians are fine with it.
That's a meaningless number unless you compare it to profits, which themselves are subject to numerous accounting games.
Whilst Apple Inc may be a US company it has subsidiary companies in the other countries/regions that it operates. Apple's earnings place 2/3rds of its income outside the US. Why should that income be subject to US tax when tax has already been paid in the region it was earned?
RTFA (NYT):
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.
production might move to china/india/africa very fast
Does retroactively qualify as "very fast"? The production is already in China.
It's certainly nothing compared to google's "We don't sell anything in the UK, it's all in Ireland, honest" bullshit.
No doubt Apple is being singled out as an example. So what? It's just congress bloviating. When they actually do something about this crap and don't apply it equally to companies in addition to Apple, then they'll be cause for complaint.
I do believe that corporations have to be resident somewhere. Even if it's Panama or the Cayman Islands.
I'll believe a country is resident in the Cayman Islands when I see their main operations there and their C level execs living there full time.
How does a "flat tax" get applied to corporations?
Personally, I'd rather pay higher property/income taxes and abandon corporate taxes so that money comes back into the country for reinvestment and so that the companies don't leave the country and expand their business elsewhere.
Sucker.
You're buying the line that companies will hold their breath until they turn blue if we enforce some of our corporate tax laws. It's like the "we'll offshore if you don't increase the H-1B quota" line. If they could move to a country with lower taxes or cheaper labor without endangering their business, then they would have already. In fact they've already done it as much as possible, so there are important business reasons to keep some of their operations in the US.
Additionally, "money comes back into the country for reinvestment" has already been shown not to work. That was the excuse the last time there was a tax holiday allowing companies to repatriate profits without paying taxes. They repatriated the money, didn't pay taxes, and didn't invest squat.
But the libertarians are right about it reducing prices. You can buy an AK-47 for $30.
While I agree, at least in part, about our current government, I'm skeptical that Apple plays tax avoidance games as a form of protest against US government practices (other than the practice of collecting taxes from Apple and its C level execs).
To here members of our government continually bemoaning how the richest people and companies "owe" it more makes me sick. The richest person has two orders of magnitude less net worth than what the government makes in taxes each year.
So you contention is that the government should be viewed and treated as an individual? However far from perfect it is in practice, the government does provide some services for 308M people. You'll have a point when Apple takes on the same responsibility.
Can you please define what "fair share" means?
What the law requires them to pay.
That's conveniently circular. So your contention is that any tax code is fair?
Which they paid... unless someone has proven otherwise
Faulty logic. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
What seems unfair is the US government attempting to lay a claim to revenues that were generated by Apple's related entity in another country.
You're not an accountant, are you? Ask a decent accountant what profits were made and what expenses were incurred by your operations in country X, and he'll ask what you want them to be. There are endless games that can be played, like transfer pricing. And what about the profits that Apple claims were generated outside of any country. Does Apple have significant operations on ships in international waters? From the NYT article:
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.
If what they did is legal, so what?
That's a big "if". I can't accuse Apple of doing anything illegal because, despite the congressional investigation, it hasn't been investigated thoroughly enough. In recent years the IRS has actually reduced personnel for corporate tax enforcement. Investigating something as complex as the books of a company the size of Apple is not something you can do in an afternoon.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If the federal government doesn't investigate them of course they won't find anything. This is not like some murder that was committed in front of 10 witnesses, where it's obvious that a crime has been committed. Far worse than Apple is the approach that Obama (like his predecessor), and his associate crony Holder at the DOJ have taken toward the financial crisis: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Cover your eyes and you're guaranteed not to find anything.
However, my guess is that if Apple is guilty of anything, it doesn't fall into the criminal league. Still their books should be thoroughly investigated. Reporter David Cay Johnston has written that large companies' enormous cash hoards are a tax violation, because there are well established limits on cash that companies may hold without declaring it profit. In other words, it's tax evasion.
I take every tax deduction I can legally find, why shouldn't Apple?
A better question is why should these ridiculous tax avoidance games that Apple plays be legal.
Here's a practical instead of philosophical argument, or rather an appeal to fairness and reason (alien to lawyers, but perhaps not all Slashdotters). Software can already be copyrighted, but hardware (electronic or otherwise) cannot. Does it seem reasonable to provide software with two types of "intellectual property" protection? What else has that? Movies can also be copyrighted. Should we also allow a patent on all movies involving a boy and his dog?
By analogy, I we could build a personal scale that measures my weight precisely down to the milligram, provably beating all the other personal scales on the market. But that would be a waste of money because such precise measurements just aren't useful for most uses of personal scales.
Your analogy doesn't stand up. You're talking about taking a system that works quite well (typical bathroom scale) and needlessly refining it. Storm forecasting is, as you point out, not nearly as accurate as we would like or could use. Therefore it's worth trying to improve it. I don't think anyone can say exactly how much a new computer will help it, as there is some research. However, since Sandy alone cost 2600x as much as this new computer, it seems like it's worth trying.
I agree. Another way of looking at it is that the only thing that can make a program novel enough to patent is a new algorithm, but algorithms are not patentable.
only specific, newly invented machines are supposed to be patentable
And if the machine is implemented in software, the only thing that makes it novel and different from a bazillion other machines with the same physical implementation is the algorithms. You're not supposed to be able to patent those. Logically this means that algorithms implemented in hardware logic are unpatentable, which is fine. They shouldn't be patentable. However algorithms are not the be all and end all of logic design, let alone electronics in general. You could still patent a new memory cell design for example.
13.x is good. I couldn't even get 14.x to install. It almost made my computer into a brick.
Wrong! Putting logic in hardware is nothing like executing it in software. You need to go back to elementary electronics and start learning the basics.
The OP didn't say putting logic in hardware is like executing it in software, he said it could be converted to hardware. If that's not supposed to be true, then I'm glad I apparently forget my elementary electronics, as I've taken signal processing software and converted it into something that does the same thing (only faster) in hardware.
In a FPGA if you "reload" the software you will change the machine ... One day it can be a conveyor build and the next it will be a bottle cap remover.
Guess you haven't tried the latest Xilinx design software - it turns everything into a brick.
The distinction between a physical machine and a physical machine running software is somewhat pointless.
That may be, but about the only thing can make a computer running program X novel enough to patent is the algorithms implemented by X. Hence you are essentially patenting an algorithm, which is not supposed to be allowed.
Damn. Is this why they make engineers take Intro to Philosophy courses? What about a Platonic ideal of a computer?
"Almost any software can be converted into a physical machine"
I think you maybe meant "virtual" machine?
The OP was right. As Archimedes said, give me enough gates and a big enough power supply and I can implement anything in hardware.
The OP is right though about them being harder to hit targets, but only before people upgraded from spears to grenades.
The OP was trying to make a joke, but on Slashdot one gets a lot of corrections.