You base that belief on what exactly? Citations are a bonus.
Retail stores normally collect sales tax in jurisdictions that imposes a sales tax. That's typically most locations in the US. Apple wouldn't be the first company to claim that they paid an excessive amount of taxes by rolling collected sales tax into their number. Here's the problem: we don't know what Apple pays in taxes and collects in sales taxes because that information isn't publicly available. If you re-read my comment, it's why I wrote "probably" before stating my opinion.
Apple is paying an even more disproportionate amount of silicon valley's taxes.
Apple pays more in collected sales tax than any other Silicon Valley company because of their retail stores. Meanwhile, corporate profits in the U.S. are funneled through a Nevada corporation and world-wide profits through an Irish subsidiary.
The point is, the normal taxpayer can't afford them - it's not gain at the margin for the taxes a little guy saves, but is for the big guys.
The little guy can do a variation of this. For example, start a Nevada corporation and open a corporate brokerage account (day trade or load up dividend-paying stocks) or own rental properties. Once the corporation makes a significant amount of money each year, you can draw a salary and open a qualified retirement to put away $54,000 each year (a combination of salary contributions plus corporate matching). Do that for a few decades, you will have a retirement account that will greatly exceed whatever you can put into an IRA/401K.
That's the real problem in my mind.
You need to change your thinking. The tax laws will never change to favor the small guy, so why not use them to your own advantage? The trick comes from converting earned income (taxed at highest rate) to portfolio (stocks) and/or passive (real estate) income (taxed at a lower rate). When portfolio/passive income exceeds earned income, you can stop working for someone else and work for yourself.
What an elititst little twit! I'll bet you're a lot of fun at parties.
Considering that I'm the only one among my friends who can afford to throw a party, I'm a lot of fun.:P
All I can say us that I hope YOU get to "enjoy" an economic-downturn-inspired layoff that ends your tech-sector career.
My friends are working at the drug store because they stopped learning when they graduated from college, spent seven years or so at their first job, got laid off during the dot com bust, took a six-month vacation while collecting unemployment benefits, and discovered that no company wanted to hire them for their obsolete job skills. Did they go back to school for a master degree? No. Did they enroll in a boot camp to enhance their jobs? No. Did they buy a book to learn something new? No. They accepted the judgment of the marketplace and got minimum wage jobs. And 15 years later, they're still at the drug store.
It's no fun, and is often a (negatively) life-changing event, from which you may NEVER recover.
Wrong! I was out of worked for two years (2009-10), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011. For two years I was told by hiring managers that I was overqualified for minimum wage jobs and by recruiters that I was unemployable for everything else. Every time I submitted my resume to a position, the recruiter would see that I've done help desk support for my last three jobs, and tell me that no help desk support jobs are available. Never mind that wasn't the job I applied for. The day after my bankruptcy got finalized I got a new full-time job.
I'll soon be starting my third year as a computer security technician for government IT. Being out of work for two years and having a bankruptcy had zero impact on my technical career. Why? Because I never stopped learning and I didn't accept the judgment of the marketplace.
We typically see negative knee-jerk reactions here when the idea of President Trump is brought up, but it turns out that President Trump has exactly what the United States of America needs in a leader today.
Charles Koch is on record that Hillary Clinton might be preferable than any of the Republican candidates for president.
I'm the IT guy for the fast-foot restraunt across the street from Apple's main campus.
If you're flipping burgers, you're not an IT guy. I have several friends who are still working at the drug store after getting laid from their first software engineering jobs in 2001. They too claim to be software engineers even though the only thing they program these days are the scanner prices.
I do IT support contract work. All my employment contracts for the last 12+ years have prohibited me from working more than 40 hours per week. None of the Fortune 500 companies want to pay for overtime anymore.
As an antiwork conservative [...]
Just because the Republicans in Congress are sitting on their hands and collecting a paycheck for not working doesn't mean that everyone else should emulate them.
Of Apple's $133bn profit, that means approximately $41.23bn was generated in the US (assuming reasonably even profit margins across the globe). They paid $19.2bn in US taxes. That's a tax rate in the US of 32%.
That amount is probably local and state sales taxes collected from Apple retail stores.
The "tax avoidance" that everyone seems to be going on about is that they're not paying US taxes on sales made in Europe and China, instead, they're paying European*, and Chinese taxes on them.
Not entirely. Apple has a PO box in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.
Should I want to hire someone at a PO box in some lax country to assign my income around - it'd be legal for me too.
Actually, Apple's PO box is in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.
Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company's profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California's corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada's? Zero.
Another technology I'm curious to see the societal impacts of will be iron-wombs. On-demand population production at the fingertips of government and business.
"Hellstorn's Hive" by Frank Herbert had a group of humans who formed a hive society and breed themselves to be like insects for specialized tasks. If a female member outlives her usefulness and has desirable genes, her head and legs are chopped off, her body is put on life support, and her womb is used to create more hive people. Creepy as hell when I first read it as a teenager. I recently read it as an adult and understood the story better. Science over the last 40 years has laid the groundwork for artificial wombs — and hive people bred for specialized tasks.
I'm reading a science fiction novel set a hundred years into the future and corporations have colonized space. One of the characters made an observation that the toaster as a kitchen appliance hadn't changed despite all the advances in space travel. In short, your cellphone is another appliance.
Current medical advances are already extending the lifetime of many people. Once the patents expire, life extension technology will become more affordable and widespread.
Elizabeth Moon wrote several novel series that indirectly touched upon this issue, where "rejuvenation" kept older people living longer in key positions of business and government.
Shouldn't be. As long as you only live off the interest, you'll never deplete the principal.
Perhaps you didn't notice the Great Recession that halved the value of stocks in many retirement plans. Those who panic by selling their stocks on the way down lost money. Those who stayed pat saw their value returned eight years later. (Thanks, Obama!) Those who lived on dividend payments from these stocks during the last eight years watched their quarterly income get smaller and smaller. An IRA or 401K is not the same as a pension.
BTW, The average American only has $1,000 set aside for retirement. Try stretching that for 20, 30, or 50 years after retirement.
Gene therapy will be like getting hip replacement surgery in your 90's. You may not live long enough to enjoy the benefits, but the insurance company will probably pick up the tab anyway.
Medical advances like this is why some people don't understand that I'm not planning to retire at 65 and live another 75 years until I'm dead at 120. Outliving retirement funds will be a serious problem for most people in the future.
The supply of housing will still go up, and prices will then go down. Economics 101.
A brand new apartment complex opened down the street from my 50-year-old apartment complex in Silicon Valley. They both have brand new exterior paint and landscaping, they both advertised themselves as luxury apartments, and they both charge similar luxury rents. Unless you lived in the area for a while, you can't tell which apartment complex is older from the outside. In fact, all the older apartment complexes are playing the same "luxury" economic game. I'm about three years away from being priced out of the market.
Slashdot Mirror
You base that belief on what exactly? Citations are a bonus.
Retail stores normally collect sales tax in jurisdictions that imposes a sales tax. That's typically most locations in the US. Apple wouldn't be the first company to claim that they paid an excessive amount of taxes by rolling collected sales tax into their number. Here's the problem: we don't know what Apple pays in taxes and collects in sales taxes because that information isn't publicly available. If you re-read my comment, it's why I wrote "probably" before stating my opinion.
Apple is paying an even more disproportionate amount of silicon valley's taxes.
Apple pays more in collected sales tax than any other Silicon Valley company because of their retail stores. Meanwhile, corporate profits in the U.S. are funneled through a Nevada corporation and world-wide profits through an Irish subsidiary.
The point is, the normal taxpayer can't afford them - it's not gain at the margin for the taxes a little guy saves, but is for the big guys.
The little guy can do a variation of this. For example, start a Nevada corporation and open a corporate brokerage account (day trade or load up dividend-paying stocks) or own rental properties. Once the corporation makes a significant amount of money each year, you can draw a salary and open a qualified retirement to put away $54,000 each year (a combination of salary contributions plus corporate matching). Do that for a few decades, you will have a retirement account that will greatly exceed whatever you can put into an IRA/401K.
That's the real problem in my mind.
You need to change your thinking. The tax laws will never change to favor the small guy, so why not use them to your own advantage? The trick comes from converting earned income (taxed at highest rate) to portfolio (stocks) and/or passive (real estate) income (taxed at a lower rate). When portfolio/passive income exceeds earned income, you can stop working for someone else and work for yourself.
What an elititst little twit! I'll bet you're a lot of fun at parties.
Considering that I'm the only one among my friends who can afford to throw a party, I'm a lot of fun. :P
All I can say us that I hope YOU get to "enjoy" an economic-downturn-inspired layoff that ends your tech-sector career.
My friends are working at the drug store because they stopped learning when they graduated from college, spent seven years or so at their first job, got laid off during the dot com bust, took a six-month vacation while collecting unemployment benefits, and discovered that no company wanted to hire them for their obsolete job skills. Did they go back to school for a master degree? No. Did they enroll in a boot camp to enhance their jobs? No. Did they buy a book to learn something new? No. They accepted the judgment of the marketplace and got minimum wage jobs. And 15 years later, they're still at the drug store.
It's no fun, and is often a (negatively) life-changing event, from which you may NEVER recover.
Wrong! I was out of worked for two years (2009-10), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011. For two years I was told by hiring managers that I was overqualified for minimum wage jobs and by recruiters that I was unemployable for everything else. Every time I submitted my resume to a position, the recruiter would see that I've done help desk support for my last three jobs, and tell me that no help desk support jobs are available. Never mind that wasn't the job I applied for. The day after my bankruptcy got finalized I got a new full-time job.
I'll soon be starting my third year as a computer security technician for government IT. Being out of work for two years and having a bankruptcy had zero impact on my technical career. Why? Because I never stopped learning and I didn't accept the judgment of the marketplace.
We typically see negative knee-jerk reactions here when the idea of President Trump is brought up, but it turns out that President Trump has exactly what the United States of America needs in a leader today.
Charles Koch is on record that Hillary Clinton might be preferable than any of the Republican candidates for president.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/charles-koch-hillary-clinton-republican-white-house-222349
Tsk tsk. Terrible show.
Catastrophic brain farts becomes more common as I get older, which is why I post only on Slashdot.
I'm the IT guy for the fast-foot restraunt across the street from Apple's main campus.
If you're flipping burgers, you're not an IT guy. I have several friends who are still working at the drug store after getting laid from their first software engineering jobs in 2001. They too claim to be software engineers even though the only thing they program these days are the scanner prices.
Instead, we work more than ever.
I do IT support contract work. All my employment contracts for the last 12+ years have prohibited me from working more than 40 hours per week. None of the Fortune 500 companies want to pay for overtime anymore.
As an antiwork conservative [...]
Just because the Republicans in Congress are sitting on their hands and collecting a paycheck for not working doesn't mean that everyone else should emulate them.
Of Apple's $133bn profit, that means approximately $41.23bn was generated in the US (assuming reasonably even profit margins across the globe). They paid $19.2bn in US taxes. That's a tax rate in the US of 32%.
That amount is probably local and state sales taxes collected from Apple retail stores.
The "tax avoidance" that everyone seems to be going on about is that they're not paying US taxes on sales made in Europe and China, instead, they're paying European*, and Chinese taxes on them.
Not entirely. Apple has a PO box in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html
Given that they sell goods that would fit best in the "affordable essentials" category?
FTFY
Should I want to hire someone at a PO box in some lax country to assign my income around - it'd be legal for me too.
Actually, Apple's PO box is in Nevada to avoid paying corporate taxes in California and 20 states.
Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple's headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company's profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California's corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada's? Zero.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html
Another technology I'm curious to see the societal impacts of will be iron-wombs. On-demand population production at the fingertips of government and business.
"Hellstorn's Hive" by Frank Herbert had a group of humans who formed a hive society and breed themselves to be like insects for specialized tasks. If a female member outlives her usefulness and has desirable genes, her head and legs are chopped off, her body is put on life support, and her womb is used to create more hive people. Creepy as hell when I first read it as a teenager. I recently read it as an adult and understood the story better. Science over the last 40 years has laid the groundwork for artificial wombs — and hive people bred for specialized tasks.
The average American is an idiot too.
Based upon the 2016 presidential election cycle, most of them are voters too.
Bird store; try a parrot.
Not quite. Sharks go back ~400 million years. Birds go back to ~250 million years. Besides, I don't want a mouthful from a parrot.
Must be a slow day if you're replying to your own comment. :/
You thank Obama for slowing the recovery?
No. I blamed the Republicans for slowing the recovery. In fact, the Party of No has made Obama one of the most powerful presidents in peace time.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/barack-obama-gop-most-powerful-213814
I'm reading a science fiction novel set a hundred years into the future and corporations have colonized space. One of the characters made an observation that the toaster as a kitchen appliance hadn't changed despite all the advances in space travel. In short, your cellphone is another appliance.
Oh good, I'm not the only one who noticed 65+75 != 120.
I wrote it wrong by not mentioning my current age. I'm 45 and plan to live another 75 years. That's 45 + 75 = 120. Retiring at 65 seems unrealistic.
The rest of us will live our normal lives of quiet desperation as we serve our life-extended masters.
I guess you haven't read today's headline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/upshot/rich-people-are-living-longer-thats-tilting-social-security-in-their-favor.html
Current medical advances are already extending the lifetime of many people. Once the patents expire, life extension technology will become more affordable and widespread.
Elizabeth Moon wrote several novel series that indirectly touched upon this issue, where "rejuvenation" kept older people living longer in key positions of business and government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familias_Regnant_universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatta's_War
Shouldn't be. As long as you only live off the interest, you'll never deplete the principal.
Perhaps you didn't notice the Great Recession that halved the value of stocks in many retirement plans. Those who panic by selling their stocks on the way down lost money. Those who stayed pat saw their value returned eight years later. (Thanks, Obama!) Those who lived on dividend payments from these stocks during the last eight years watched their quarterly income get smaller and smaller. An IRA or 401K is not the same as a pension.
BTW, The average American only has $1,000 set aside for retirement. Try stretching that for 20, 30, or 50 years after retirement.
Gene therapy will be like getting hip replacement surgery in your 90's. You may not live long enough to enjoy the benefits, but the insurance company will probably pick up the tab anyway.
Medical advances like this is why some people don't understand that I'm not planning to retire at 65 and live another 75 years until I'm dead at 120. Outliving retirement funds will be a serious problem for most people in the future.
The supply of housing will still go up, and prices will then go down. Economics 101.
A brand new apartment complex opened down the street from my 50-year-old apartment complex in Silicon Valley. They both have brand new exterior paint and landscaping, they both advertised themselves as luxury apartments, and they both charge similar luxury rents. Unless you lived in the area for a while, you can't tell which apartment complex is older from the outside. In fact, all the older apartment complexes are playing the same "luxury" economic game. I'm about three years away from being priced out of the market.