And sadly that $3,000,000,000 wouldn't dent the $1.5 trillion dollar deficit.
Worse - since the government has shown it only can stand to spend more than it brings in, bringing in more would almost certainly just result in additional spending that's even greater than the additional income.
Starve the beast, that's the only way to shrink it.
the problem is the polititions dont really seem to run things any more...our congress critters and to a large extent presidents in the past 12 years are all so interested in advancing their own dumbass agendas at any cost that it has ceased being a debate, and become a WWE style scripted back and forth that gets everyone worked up and nothing done.
Both sides are right and wrong on some points, that is true of any opinion - for example I am a Libertarian, but I realize that you cant eliminate the welfare state nor should you - you dont want families with kids and such out on the street a week or two after a job loss for example.
heres my take - yes taxes are too high, too complex and have way too many loopholes, government spending is way too high, and should be cut drastically
heres my stupid notion:
-on the income side-
- keep the progressive income tax, but remove all credits and deductions except charitible giving. "income"would now include capitol gains and money from real work - income tax rate of 5% on all income , 10% on every dollar over 30000/yr, and 30% on any dollar over 1 million.
- Flat corprate tax rate of 20% on profit, no exceptions, no deductions.
- stop using the tax code to influence behavior, let the market do that.
on the spending side
- cut the militery, get us out of the wars, get our guys out of germany, japan and such too
- cut the tsa budget to pre 9/11 levels, we dont need a bunch of high school dropout duchebags feeling us up at the airports. It wouldn't have stopped 9/11 as the weapons they brought on were legal at the time and the cockpit doors were not secured.
- really fix education, we spend more on education per student than anyone in the world and have terrible outcomes, more money isnt the answer, we need to use what we have smarter, and in the process learn how to teach our kids better and use less resources to do so.
UH, yeah ya think! And I love Apple products but give me an f'ing break.
Yeah they don't have enough. ONly 98 Billion in CASH. Meanwhile people are out of work and loosing their houses...
I could not agree more. Too bad the entire Republican party thinks it should all be tax free and corporate taxes should be zero. Meanwhile none of these big companies pays taxes anyways. What a joke, and it ain't funny...
BS..."the entire Republican party" does not take the position that corporate taxes should be zero.
Once again, brainwashed corporation-hating liberals have to resort to lies to prop up support for their totalitarian command/control ideology.
Oh...and wasn't it under Obama's administration that GE paid zero taxes?
...and received government subsidies for these dubious "green economy" initiatives?
If you give tax breaks for repatriation, it offers an incentive for companies to move operations overseas as they pay lower taxes abroad and profits are returned without penalty. This is unfair for companies who don't move operations overseas and pay higher tax rates.
Therefore the repatriation tax must exist.
Evidence suggests that during tax breaks, major corporations do not invest in job creation.
Taxes are always unfair however as they take money from people who have earned it to give it to people who largely have not.
It seems to me the fairest option that benefits both govenrment and corporation would be to tie taxation with job creation. Instead of companies being forced to pay a portion of the earnings and receive nothing in return, they would instead have to commit to creating sustained jobs (audited independently) in their own country and business over a period of time.
The government gets their job creation and the corporation makes money by having a stronger workforce. Also, because the commitment would be multi-year, it's equivalent to a lower immediate tax rate e.g commit $20b to sustaining 100,000 new jobs over a 10 year period with salaries in the region of $30,000-50,000. Year 1 commitment is under $5b (<8% tax).
These jobs don't have to be salaried employees but funds for iOS developers or internal/external R&D funds controlled by the company.
The current issue here is the HIGH tax rate. Lowing the tax rate on foreign money will encourage domestic investments once companies like Apple bring back profits from overseas.
Two choices:
$0 of the $60,000,000,000 with current tax rate or
$x of the $60,000,000,000 with a lower tax rate
That $x multiplies when it's injected in this nation's economy.
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Right... Corporations should get a free ride and accumulate billions by using the commons paid for by everyone else. Give me a break. I love Apple, but they're showing their free lunch corporatism which is no surprise.
Without a healthy, educated workforce, laws to protect their IP, roads to deliver their products, etc etc, there would be no Apple.
I dnt expect them to behave differently, but I expect and applaud our President for telling them to shove it and start carrying their weight for the benefits they get.
Nobody's cheating anything. It's a question of time. Who has more time, Apple or Obama? Apple or your congressman?
Guess what... it's Apple. The conclusion to this fight is already written. It's just a matter of when. Politicians can't be patient. The system is set up against that.
Right... Corporations should get a free ride and accumulate billions by using the commons paid for by everyone else. Give me a break. I love Apple, but they're showing their free lunch corporatism which is no surprise.
Without a healthy, educated workforce, laws to protect their IP, roads to deliver their products, etc etc, there would be no Apple.
Apple has already paid taxes in accordance with the countries whose resources they used to produce the income. America just wants more for doing nothing. Apple paid taxes to America for the money earned here. The USA wants them to pay taxes on money earned using Japan's roads, water and air. The USA is the only country on earth that tries this BS.
Apple made a LOT of money exporting jobs and manufacturing overseas. It seems fair that some of that money should be taxed on its way back to the U.S.
It's not that simple. Apple hasn't exported jobs if they didn't exist in US in the first place. We don't have skilled engineers to design and manage production. And we sure don't have enough unskilled labor for the grunt work. Who wants to screw batteries into iPhones 5000 times each day? Nobody in the US is going to take that job. Those positions would have to be filled by robots. Which is still a challenge. Thus, those 100K's jobs in china would equate to only 1000's in the US. Yet, those would be high paying jobs good for America. However, we don't have people with the required engineering skills to run the factories and program/supervise the robots, manage inbound supply chain, etc.
Operated-owned factories aren't efficient nor flexible. Given Apple's product cycle and demand fluctuations, it's near impossible to manage capacity utilization. It would be constant fight against having too much or too little labor & factory equipment. Nearly all CE products are assembled by contract manufacturers, 40% CE products come from Foxconn. It's manufacturing on demand. Only pay when needed, and can easily adjust volume. Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, all the major CE's use Foxconn for assembly because it's the most efficient solution.
The idea that Apple has moved jobs overseas is a farce. The idea that Apple should bring those jobs to US is laughable. It's not even a issue of higher wages. Apple does't have the needed labor, expertise, geographic location, factories in the US. Even then, Apple wouldn't have economies of scale and flexibility that contract manufacturer affords.
Saying Apple makes a lot of money from overseas manufacturing is like saying Apple has made a lot of money from using FedEx. Imagine if FDX were a Chinese firm, should Apple be expected to buy its own planes/trucks and distribute in-house so that those jobs are filled by Americans? Imagine what that would look like on launch day.
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Was George Bush "robbing" you when you were made to pay income taxes during his administration? How is it that only Democratic presidents are accused of theft via taxation??
You got that right! Steve Jobs tells Obama the manufacturing jobs are NEVER coming back to the US. Now the company wants their money made overseas with little to no taxation. Can you say chutzpa?
Why should the US government get tax dollars on foreign income, it is not like the US government helped Apple earn ANY of the money?
honestly...if the money was earned overseas and all income from overseas production I do not see why they should be taxed to bring it here...if I go work in England for a month and come back to the US do I have to pay a tax? (honest question as I never worked overseas)
Or at least if they are requiring a tax to be paid it should be significantly less than the 35% (if I'm reading it correctly) that they're asking for.
I don't see how money earned and taxed in country A should be taxed again in country B...but being that I am unversed in these sort of dealings my opinion isn't worth a damn, but still...I say no tax, or no default tax rate at the very least based on what I know.
Apple should import the iPads, iPhones etc to the US partially completed (mostly completed) as raw materials/parts. Then set up a factory in the US to polish the glass, etch the name and FCC id info, put the cord and the charger in the packaging and call it made in USA. Their foreign subsidiaries have to buy the products from the US and the money stays here.
This would at least double shipping costs. Apple would have to pay taxes in the US on every product made and then pay foreign taxes on the profits made selling them in the foreign country. The money would still stay overseas because Apple would have to still pay taxes to bring the money home.
Your idea / plan would add to Apple's costs and substantially reduced their profits. Tell me again why they should do this?
No, Bruce, that's not how it works for Toyota or basically all other countries' multinational companies. For nearly all the rest of the world profits are taxed in the country they are earned and that's all. The US on the other hand wants to take money from already taxed profits earned in other countries. Even European governments with huge social systems that require crazy amounts of tax dollars to prop up don't try to steal money their nation's companies on the profits those companies earn from international business.
I'm not saying you are wrong, I just don't know. Can you or anyone post some links? Need some light reading...
For example BMW, they import engines etc into SC. Do they put profit on the imported parts(engine etc); thus really no US profit from assembly of components and sale is done in US(to avoid our outrageous corporate tax rates).... The profit is back in Germany and they pay no tax here? Or do they pay the horrible tax rate here, and not pay tax there?
Or...(which is what I understand really happens)... Do they just pay or deduct the difference in rates between the countries?
Really, I don't know, any international finance guys in the house?
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ktappe
Was George Bush "robbing" you when you were made to pay income taxes during his administration? How is it that only Democratic presidents are accused of theft via taxation??
Because Republicans never talk about raising people's taxes which Obama and the Dems have basically guaranteed with the sunset of the Bush tax rates this year. Your vote is powerful.
If the government caves into the demands of the business community, it isnt going to help with the overall economy as a whole.
This will only encourage companies to send jobs or manufacturing plants OUTSIDE of the US in anticipation of future tax breaks from Congress to take advantage of.
Wrong. The opposite. Taxing income earned abroad when repatriated encourages companies to stockpile income outside the US, and when the firm wants to build a call support center, or R&D facility, data center etc they will be incentivized to use the funds held outside the US, which means it will be spent outside the US.
The government demands that firms must pay to bring money back, then they will just keep hoarding it abroad. The government will receive $0. Agreeing to a 5% tax may not be 35%, but better than nothing.
I love Apple, but I have as much sympathy for them on this issue as I do for millionaires complaining about their income taxes. I'll take that dilemma over the alternative, any day...
Exactly which millionaires do you see complaining about their income taxes?
Comments
And sadly that $3,000,000,000 wouldn't dent the $1.5 trillion dollar deficit.
Worse - since the government has shown it only can stand to spend more than it brings in, bringing in more would almost certainly just result in additional spending that's even greater than the additional income.
Starve the beast, that's the only way to shrink it.
Both sides are right and wrong on some points, that is true of any opinion - for example I am a Libertarian, but I realize that you cant eliminate the welfare state nor should you - you dont want families with kids and such out on the street a week or two after a job loss for example.
heres my take - yes taxes are too high, too complex and have way too many loopholes, government spending is way too high, and should be cut drastically
heres my stupid notion:
-on the income side-
- keep the progressive income tax, but remove all credits and deductions except charitible giving. "income"would now include capitol gains and money from real work - income tax rate of 5% on all income , 10% on every dollar over 30000/yr, and 30% on any dollar over 1 million.
- Flat corprate tax rate of 20% on profit, no exceptions, no deductions.
- stop using the tax code to influence behavior, let the market do that.
on the spending side
- cut the militery, get us out of the wars, get our guys out of germany, japan and such too
- cut the tsa budget to pre 9/11 levels, we dont need a bunch of high school dropout duchebags feeling us up at the airports. It wouldn't have stopped 9/11 as the weapons they brought on were legal at the time and the cockpit doors were not secured.
- really fix education, we spend more on education per student than anyone in the world and have terrible outcomes, more money isnt the answer, we need to use what we have smarter, and in the process learn how to teach our kids better and use less resources to do so.
And sadly that $3,000,000,000 wouldn't dent the $1.5 trillion dollar deficit.
what is $1.5 trillion dollar deficit?
2011 US trade deficit $558 billion
US National Debt $15+ trillion
UH, yeah ya think! And I love Apple products but give me an f'ing break.
Yeah they don't have enough. ONly 98 Billion in CASH. Meanwhile people are out of work and loosing their houses...
I could not agree more. Too bad the entire Republican party thinks it should all be tax free and corporate taxes should be zero. Meanwhile none of these big companies pays taxes anyways. What a joke, and it ain't funny...
BS..."the entire Republican party" does not take the position that corporate taxes should be zero.
Once again, brainwashed corporation-hating liberals have to resort to lies to prop up support for their totalitarian command/control ideology.
Oh...and wasn't it under Obama's administration that GE paid zero taxes?
...and received government subsidies for these dubious "green economy" initiatives?
Therefore the repatriation tax must exist.
Evidence suggests that during tax breaks, major corporations do not invest in job creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYXF9zp5AY4
Therefore the repatriation tax must be high.
Taxes are always unfair however as they take money from people who have earned it to give it to people who largely have not.
It seems to me the fairest option that benefits both govenrment and corporation would be to tie taxation with job creation. Instead of companies being forced to pay a portion of the earnings and receive nothing in return, they would instead have to commit to creating sustained jobs (audited independently) in their own country and business over a period of time.
The government gets their job creation and the corporation makes money by having a stronger workforce. Also, because the commitment would be multi-year, it's equivalent to a lower immediate tax rate e.g commit $20b to sustaining 100,000 new jobs over a 10 year period with salaries in the region of $30,000-50,000. Year 1 commitment is under $5b (<8% tax).
These jobs don't have to be salaried employees but funds for iOS developers or internal/external R&D funds controlled by the company.
And fairly myopic.
Apple's dilemma (wow, can it be called that?) is a GOOD problem to have.
Apple is a US company...that has to deal with the IRS tax code (that's the dilemma).
Would anyone levy the same criticism if, say, Apple was based in Thailand?
The current issue here is the HIGH tax rate. Lowing the tax rate on foreign money will encourage domestic investments once companies like Apple bring back profits from overseas.
Two choices:
$0 of the $60,000,000,000 with current tax rate or
$x of the $60,000,000,000 with a lower tax rate
That $x multiplies when it's injected in this nation's economy.
.
Two choices:
Reward tax cheats
Don't reward tax cheats
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Right... Corporations should get a free ride and accumulate billions by using the commons paid for by everyone else. Give me a break. I love Apple, but they're showing their free lunch corporatism which is no surprise.
Without a healthy, educated workforce, laws to protect their IP, roads to deliver their products, etc etc, there would be no Apple.
I dnt expect them to behave differently, but I expect and applaud our President for telling them to shove it and start carrying their weight for the benefits they get.
Two choices:
Reward tax cheats
Don't reward tax cheats
Nobody's cheating anything. It's a question of time. Who has more time, Apple or Obama? Apple or your congressman?
Guess what... it's Apple. The conclusion to this fight is already written. It's just a matter of when. Politicians can't be patient. The system is set up against that.
Right... Corporations should get a free ride and accumulate billions by using the commons paid for by everyone else. Give me a break. I love Apple, but they're showing their free lunch corporatism which is no surprise.
Without a healthy, educated workforce, laws to protect their IP, roads to deliver their products, etc etc, there would be no Apple.
Apple has already paid taxes in accordance with the countries whose resources they used to produce the income. America just wants more for doing nothing. Apple paid taxes to America for the money earned here. The USA wants them to pay taxes on money earned using Japan's roads, water and air. The USA is the only country on earth that tries this BS.
Apple made a LOT of money exporting jobs and manufacturing overseas. It seems fair that some of that money should be taxed on its way back to the U.S.
It's not that simple. Apple hasn't exported jobs if they didn't exist in US in the first place. We don't have skilled engineers to design and manage production. And we sure don't have enough unskilled labor for the grunt work. Who wants to screw batteries into iPhones 5000 times each day? Nobody in the US is going to take that job. Those positions would have to be filled by robots. Which is still a challenge. Thus, those 100K's jobs in china would equate to only 1000's in the US. Yet, those would be high paying jobs good for America. However, we don't have people with the required engineering skills to run the factories and program/supervise the robots, manage inbound supply chain, etc.
Operated-owned factories aren't efficient nor flexible. Given Apple's product cycle and demand fluctuations, it's near impossible to manage capacity utilization. It would be constant fight against having too much or too little labor & factory equipment. Nearly all CE products are assembled by contract manufacturers, 40% CE products come from Foxconn. It's manufacturing on demand. Only pay when needed, and can easily adjust volume. Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, all the major CE's use Foxconn for assembly because it's the most efficient solution.
The idea that Apple has moved jobs overseas is a farce. The idea that Apple should bring those jobs to US is laughable. It's not even a issue of higher wages. Apple does't have the needed labor, expertise, geographic location, factories in the US. Even then, Apple wouldn't have economies of scale and flexibility that contract manufacturer affords.
Saying Apple makes a lot of money from overseas manufacturing is like saying Apple has made a lot of money from using FedEx. Imagine if FDX were a Chinese firm, should Apple be expected to buy its own planes/trucks and distribute in-house so that those jobs are filled by Americans? Imagine what that would look like on launch day.
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Was George Bush "robbing" you when you were made to pay income taxes during his administration? How is it that only Democratic presidents are accused of theft via taxation??
You got that right! Steve Jobs tells Obama the manufacturing jobs are NEVER coming back to the US. Now the company wants their money made overseas with little to no taxation. Can you say chutzpa?
Why should the US government get tax dollars on foreign income, it is not like the US government helped Apple earn ANY of the money?
Or at least if they are requiring a tax to be paid it should be significantly less than the 35% (if I'm reading it correctly) that they're asking for.
I don't see how money earned and taxed in country A should be taxed again in country B...but being that I am unversed in these sort of dealings my opinion isn't worth a damn, but still...I say no tax, or no default tax rate at the very least based on what I know.
Apple should import the iPads, iPhones etc to the US partially completed (mostly completed) as raw materials/parts. Then set up a factory in the US to polish the glass, etch the name and FCC id info, put the cord and the charger in the packaging and call it made in USA. Their foreign subsidiaries have to buy the products from the US and the money stays here.
This would at least double shipping costs. Apple would have to pay taxes in the US on every product made and then pay foreign taxes on the profits made selling them in the foreign country. The money would still stay overseas because Apple would have to still pay taxes to bring the money home.
Your idea / plan would add to Apple's costs and substantially reduced their profits. Tell me again why they should do this?
No, Bruce, that's not how it works for Toyota or basically all other countries' multinational companies. For nearly all the rest of the world profits are taxed in the country they are earned and that's all. The US on the other hand wants to take money from already taxed profits earned in other countries. Even European governments with huge social systems that require crazy amounts of tax dollars to prop up don't try to steal money their nation's companies on the profits those companies earn from international business.
I'm not saying you are wrong, I just don't know. Can you or anyone post some links? Need some light reading...
For example BMW, they import engines etc into SC. Do they put profit on the imported parts(engine etc); thus really no US profit from assembly of components and sale is done in US(to avoid our outrageous corporate tax rates).... The profit is back in Germany and they pay no tax here? Or do they pay the horrible tax rate here, and not pay tax there?
Or...(which is what I understand really happens)... Do they just pay or deduct the difference in rates between the countries?
Really, I don't know, any international finance guys in the house?
Obama wants to rob Apple to pay down his $5 trillion increase in the deficit- no surprise here. Carry on.
One term president- so said Steve Jobs.
Was George Bush "robbing" you when you were made to pay income taxes during his administration? How is it that only Democratic presidents are accused of theft via taxation??
Because Republicans never talk about raising people's taxes which Obama and the Dems have basically guaranteed with the sunset of the Bush tax rates this year. Your vote is powerful.
If the government caves into the demands of the business community, it isnt going to help with the overall economy as a whole.
This will only encourage companies to send jobs or manufacturing plants OUTSIDE of the US in anticipation of future tax breaks from Congress to take advantage of.
Wrong. The opposite. Taxing income earned abroad when repatriated encourages companies to stockpile income outside the US, and when the firm wants to build a call support center, or R&D facility, data center etc they will be incentivized to use the funds held outside the US, which means it will be spent outside the US.
The government demands that firms must pay to bring money back, then they will just keep hoarding it abroad. The government will receive $0. Agreeing to a 5% tax may not be 35%, but better than nothing.
I love Apple, but I have as much sympathy for them on this issue as I do for millionaires complaining about their income taxes. I'll take that dilemma over the alternative, any day...
Exactly which millionaires do you see complaining about their income taxes?
Was George Bush "robbing" you when you were made to pay income taxes during his administration?
I doubt his income was earned outside of the US.