My understanding is that Apple's argument (and I suspect, the U.S. government's) is that the $17 billion Apple income the EU says should be recovered by Ireland, is income that Apple says should some day be repatriated to the U.S. to pay the appropriate taxes there. Assuming the Trump tax holiday for foreign cash materializes, Apple would then bring that cash back for taxation.
Apple has ZERO plans to ever pay taxes on the majority of its foreign cash holdings whether Trump's Corporate Tax Holiday ever materializes or not. For those that want proof of that simply look at Apple's financials to see what it has set aside for deferred taxes on money they do someday have plans on "bringing home", and Apple's footnote statements concerning cash "permanently held overseas". But sure, Apple would likely repatriate at least some of it if it's financially beneficial to them.
So if Apple wasn't the wealthiest company in the world it would be a burden? What if they were losing money and going bankrupt? You're letting a bias coerce you. Should rich people pay more than their "fair share" just because they're rich or should they pay what they are legally required to pay?
If Apple was losing money, they wouldn't pay taxes. If they were a small business, the taxes are more of a burden as they may have lost money in the preceding years and were still in the process of paying back creditors with interest. Nobody is expecting Apple to pay more than the rate small businesses and individuals pay. A small single digit taxation for the biggest company in the world is unfair when small businesses and individuals pay double digit taxes.
Marvin, you've not accounted for the wages, benefits and retirement benefits costs surrounding the employment of millions of US government employees... employees who are self-interested in their continual push for higher salaries and benefits and do not directly answer to the public. Their compensation comes out of our taxes and there is no counterbalancing force which restrains that growth. Politicians receive the support of the government employee unions and they in turn reward these employees and unions with protections.
In business, what determines costs/compensation is competition. In government, what determines costs/compensation is politics.
This is a problem but the wealthiest people and companies avoiding taxes isn't the solution to it. If spending can be cut then cut it directly, public employees are a very small minority vs the overall voting population. The following has details of the spending in the US with employment numbers and salaries:
The salaries in some cases look excessive for what they need to be but let's say they cut the numbers of police, emergency services, teachers, how much of that then causes rising costs in crime? It's a balancing act. You need a certain amount of support employees for a certain amount of citizens e.g 1 police officer for 300 people, 1 fire fighter for 700 people, 1 teacher for every 15 students etc. It scales with the population.
You would say to make a whole bunch of it private, mostly education because thats the highest number of employees (10m). But this isn't going to save taxpayers money, they would just be price-gouged by private services in the same way they are with private healthcare (which also affects the budgets because the government has to pay private pharmaceuticals companies).
None of this justifies avoiding ~20% taxes (if paid in the main countries, not Ireland), this isn't a high rate of taxation. If they were being asked for 50%+ tax rate then it would be an excessive charge but this is nowhere near it. Apple spent $14b on a share buyback in 2 weeks ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-repurchases-14b-of-own-shares-in-2-weeks-1391734918 ), this amount of money barely dents their assets and it's not wasted, it's providing jobs for people, many of whom can then afford to buy Apple products (10m x $650 = $6.5b revenue every year), money just cycles round and round.
Comments
This is a problem but the wealthiest people and companies avoiding taxes isn't the solution to it. If spending can be cut then cut it directly, public employees are a very small minority vs the overall voting population. The following has details of the spending in the US with employment numbers and salaries:
https://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/2013_summary_report.pdf
The salaries in some cases look excessive for what they need to be but let's say they cut the numbers of police, emergency services, teachers, how much of that then causes rising costs in crime? It's a balancing act. You need a certain amount of support employees for a certain amount of citizens e.g 1 police officer for 300 people, 1 fire fighter for 700 people, 1 teacher for every 15 students etc. It scales with the population.
You would say to make a whole bunch of it private, mostly education because thats the highest number of employees (10m). But this isn't going to save taxpayers money, they would just be price-gouged by private services in the same way they are with private healthcare (which also affects the budgets because the government has to pay private pharmaceuticals companies).
None of this justifies avoiding ~20% taxes (if paid in the main countries, not Ireland), this isn't a high rate of taxation. If they were being asked for 50%+ tax rate then it would be an excessive charge but this is nowhere near it. Apple spent $14b on a share buyback in 2 weeks ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-repurchases-14b-of-own-shares-in-2-weeks-1391734918 ), this amount of money barely dents their assets and it's not wasted, it's providing jobs for people, many of whom can then afford to buy Apple products (10m x $650 = $6.5b revenue every year), money just cycles round and round.