Apple accused of sidestepping taxes, company counters by touting job creation

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  • Reply 101 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bwik View Post


    if I had a successful little company earning $10 million / year, with say 5 employees, you better believe the government will expect a share of my money.  What's unfair is, if I make $10 billion / year, I can afford a white shoe tax engineer law firm (roughly $50 million/yr)  to stonewash my tax bill down to zero percent.  That's WRONG!!  Megacorps should not have this advantage over small business.


     


    The solution is to eliminate corporate tax and concentrate on collecting a percentage of wealthy people's realized income.  Don't do it on the business side.  Do it on the shareholder side.  It's easier and demonstrably works better.


     


     



     


    IF you had a company with only 5 employees you would not have a presence in most of the USA and employees worldwide, therefore you wouldn't need a "white shoe tax engineer law firm" to study the tax problems associated with a multi-national, country-wide operation. In fact with only 5 employees you'd have a single state presence within a single county within likely a single tax zone. You could turn your books over to a CPA and be totally served. 


     


    Megacorps, to use your expression, have an expensive expense burden (let's use your $50 million/yr) to make sure they are in compliance with all the weird-assed laws (including tax laws) throughout the world and one's own country. To turn your first paragraph argument around:  Megacorps should not have this advantage expense that over small businesses don't have.

  • Reply 102 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by whatisgoingon View Post


    Did Apple remember to subtract the millions of jobs they have caused to be lost at RIM, HP and others around the world?  And all the associated small independent companies that have gone bankrupt because there aren't enough handsets/tablets sold to support them developing the necessary software for those OS's?



     


    And it's Apple's responsibility to make sure competing businesses are able to keep their employees? How does that logic work in competition? Shouldn't you be asking why those businesses aren't able to compete today when many of them were miles ahead of Apple in their respective industry a few years ago?

  • Reply 103 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Planet Blue View Post


     


    I am speechless. The ignorance, intolerance, and utterly disgusting and childish posts on this site are just too much sometimes.


     


    To the rest of you arguing Apple greatly benefits America (and thus sidestepping/dodging taxes is completely fine), you should at least consider how our government and society have benefited Apple. Educating its employees, providing a secure environment, constructing infrastructure, and much more. Of course Apple benefits America. Nobody is arguing they don't. And yes, it's legal to evade taxes. Just maybe they shouldn't. That, or the loopholes should be closed. Something to consider.


     


    And please, a little civility and respect. Insults and petty appeals to emotion don't strengthen your argument - it just makes you look uneducated and immature. Not everyone that disagrees with you is anti-American, a socialist, or a wanker. Thanks.



    I don't believe it is legal to evade taxes. However, any business that doesn't take every available deduction is just foolish and could be making themselves uncompetitive with companies that are doing so. The federal, state and local governments have it within their authority to modify tax laws at any time...after all, they created the laws in the first place.


     


    FYI: When you use pejorative terms like "evade" and "loopholes" when you write, you begin to sound like those you find so ignorant and intolerant. 


     

  • Reply 104 of 224
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Planet Blue View Post


    To the rest of you arguing Apple greatly benefits America (and thus sidestepping/dodging taxes is completely fine), you should at least consider how our government and society have benefited Apple. Educating its employees, providing a secure environment, constructing infrastructure, and much more. Of course Apple benefits America. Nobody is arguing they don't. And yes, it's legal to evade taxes. Just maybe they shouldn't. That, or the loopholes should be closed. Something to consider.



     


    No, it is illegal to evade taxes, and Apple is not being accused of that.  It is legal to minimize (avoid) taxes, and Apple, in common with all publicly traded companies, has an obligation to its shareholders to do that.

  • Reply 105 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Commodification View Post



    Steve Jobs could get those who work for them to do the impossible, but apparently making stuff in the USA and paying their fair share of taxes wasn't one of them.


     


    Taxes had little to do with moving production to Foxconn. In China, Foxconn can advertise and have 10,000 industrial engineers on the payroll within a week. When Foxconn needs 50,000 assemblers, they can be found in a week. This kind of sudden change in production levels cannot be accomplished in most of the countries in the world. In the USA, we could not even get the production lines set up in such short periods, much less find the people to work them.


     


    The problem reminds me of an old communist joke: In Russia, in the 1960s expansive "5-year plans" were often announced that could not be attained. In effect if it took 1,000,000 farmers to raise X number of tons of wheat in one year, then 6,000,000 farmers could get it done in 2 months. 


     


    Right now, China gets the contracts to manufacturer and their government gets the taxes from their people and manufacturers. If Apple should stop making iPods tomorrow, then that economic impact will be felt in China, not by Apple. By not owning the factories Apple can" buy" production as needed. The old idea of bringing everything in house, a la 1970s, has largely gone away. 

  • Reply 106 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Hunabku View Post


    Wow the country which once revolted because of being taxed is now the heaviest taxer in the world!  Today we revolt when others don't do as they should and bend over, as it were, for the King and his military.


     


    I'm sure our forefathers are spinning in their graves.



     


    You don't know squat. The USA is FAR from being the most taxes country. Use Google for a few seconds before you expose your ignorance to badly.

  • Reply 107 of 224
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Planet Blue View Post


     


     


    I am speechless. The ignorance, intolerance, and utterly disgusting and childish posts on this site are just too much sometimes.


     


     



     


    I notice that you do not address or even present a single educated rebuttal to any of the valid points that I made in my lengthy post which lays out why it is simply wrong for anybody to demand that Apple pays more than their legal share in taxes in compliance with the law. 


     


    I find your view to be extremely ignorant and also rather shallow minded. And just FYI, it is the left in this country which has recently been demonizing the successful and the rich, and I do not need to be tolerant towards intolerant individuals and leftist media outlets which promotes such propaganda. 

  • Reply 108 of 224
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


     


     


    Apple should tell them to pound sand.




    Besides, the entire premise of the claim is wrong.




    Apple's income taxes are only part of the equation. As long as Apple is legally calculating and filing their taxes, no one has any right to complain. But beyond that:



    Sales taxes. Apple sells well over $100 B in products a year. Let's assume that the average sales tax rate is 5% (obviously, it's zero in some places, but as high as 17% or more in parts of Europe). That's $5,000,000,000 in sales taxes from selling Apple products.




    Then, Apple will be issuing a dividend this year. I'm not going to look up the number, but say it's $20 B. If the average recipient pays 30%, that's another $6,000,000,000 in income taxes.



    Add in 30,000 direct employees. When you add income taxes, employment taxes, etc, that's probably close to another $1,000,000,000.


     


    Property taxes? I'm not even going to guess.



    Finally, all the indirect jobs created. Apple claims as many as 500,000, so multiple that last figure by 10.




    Clearly, the government is getting a lot of tax revenue based on Apple's success. The whiners really need to just shut the heck up. If there's a problem with the tax code, then they should lobby the government to fix it. But singling out one company and chastising them for not paying more taxes than legally required is asinine. And, btw, how about if all the executives at the NYT publish their tax returns and show us how much more tax they paid than they were legally required to.



     


    Good post. There'a very few companies that have created such an ecosystem of wealth for so many other companies and people to a greater extent than Apple has- if any.  I can't even imagine the # of companies whose health and success is directly linked to Apple's success. Yes, Apple has done extremely well for itself, but in the process it has cropped up entirely new industries and made possible the livelihood of so many people not even connected to the company. Think about the hundreds of development companies, accessory and case makers, etc for Apple products whose success is directly a success of Apple's success. Apple has benefitted so many in so many different ways. Yet it's not surprising that these negative stories and manufactured outrages/controversies have been so common the past few months. It's fun to tear down a successful company that has created its success legitimately by creating things people love and through unprecedented, constant innovation, and ignore everyone else, that have much worse business practises and have contributed little to nothing worth a damn beyond aping all of Apple's innovations. 

  • Reply 109 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    Why Apple finds it necessary to defend themselves publicly against these socialist mouthpieces (Mike Daisey, NY Times) is beyond me. They should just call them up individually late at night, like Steve used to do, and berate them until they cry "Uncle"!



     


    These "socialist mouthpieces" are simply pointing out the hypocrisy that if "corporations are people too" then there is a massive discrepancy between average corporate tax rates and average personal tax rates.  Apple pays less than 10 % corporate tax.  How much tax do you pay?  If corporations paid more (their fair share of) tax then either you would pay less tax or you would get much better and cheaper public services, or a combination of the two.


     


    The tax is only on corporate profits.  Apple are making squillians and they can afford to give a bit more back.  If they paid just 20 % tax that's billions more to support things like hospitals, schools, roads, whatever!  If I were in California with a broke government I'd be wanting the law changed to close some of these loopholes!

  • Reply 110 of 224
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by s.metcalf View Post


     


     


    These "socialist mouthpieces" are simply pointing out the hypocrisy that if "corporations are people too" then there is a massive discrepancy between average corporate tax rates and average personal tax rates.  Apple pays less than 10 % corporate tax.  How much tax do you pay?  If corporations paid more (their fair share of) tax then either you would pay less tax or you would get much better and cheaper public services, or a combination of the two.


     


    The tax is only on corporate profits.  Apple are making squillians and they can afford to give a bit more back.  If they paid just 20 % tax that's billions more to support things like hospitals, schools, roads, whatever!  If I were in California with a broke government I'd be wanting the law changed to close some of these loopholes!



     


    The problem is not Apple. I'd say that the problem is the nearly 50% of Americans who don't contribute squat. These same people are probably the same types of people who demand that others contribute more. That's very generous of them.

  • Reply 111 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    Sales taxes. Apple sells well over $100 B in products a year. Let's assume that the average sales tax rate is 5% (obviously, it's zero in some places, but as high as 17% or more in parts of Europe). That's $5,000,000,000 in sales taxes from selling Apple products.



     


    Yeah but who's paying that sales tax...Apple or you and I?

  • Reply 112 of 224
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    Also, I find the sudden appearance of the article in the NY Times amusing considering the deep ocean of trouble their owner, Rupert Murdoch, is currently floundering (with regards to the wiretap scandal in England).



     


    I noticed that somebody already corrected you on the next page, but you gotta admit, that was quite a blunder. :) Murdoch would probably be the last person on earth to be associated with owning a left wing newspaper like the NYT.

  • Reply 113 of 224


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Macky the Macky View Post


     


     


    Taxes had little to do with moving production to Foxconn. In China, Foxconn can advertise and have 10,000 industrial engineers on the payroll within a week. When Foxconn needs 50,000 assemblers, they can be found in a week. This kind of sudden change in production levels cannot be accomplished in most of the countries in the world. In the USA, we could not even get the production lines set up in such short periods, much less find the people to work them.


     


    The problem reminds me of an old communist joke: In Russia, in the 1960s expansive "5-year plans" were often announced that could not be attained. In effect if it took 1,000,000 farmers to raise X number of tons of wheat in one year, then 6,000,000 farmers could get it done in 2 months. 


     


    Right now, China gets the contracts to manufacturer and their government gets the taxes from their people and manufacturers. If Apple should stop making iPods tomorrow, then that economic impact will be felt in China, not by Apple. By not owning the factories Apple can" buy" production as needed. The old idea of bringing everything in house, a la 1970s, has largely gone away. 



     


    It's like how they use to justify slavery in the south when it was legal at the time. If Steve wanted it bad enough he could of brought assembly jobs back to the USA, but like paying their fair share of taxes they found a loop hole bigger than the one that is at the center of Apple's 15 billion dollar future (one ring to rule them all) HQ.


     


    design-for-apple-hq.jpeg

  • Reply 114 of 224
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    Also, I find the sudden appearance of the article in the NY Times amusing considering the deep ocean of trouble their owner, Rupert Murdoch, is currently floundering (with regards to the wiretap scandal in England).



     


    The sentence for a crime of ignorance of this magnitude should be to read history. (Ayn Rand does not write history.) 


     


    Duhigg is not a socialist, or a leftist. He is a yuppie bleeding-heart sleaze. Mike Daisey is not a leftist or a socialist. He is a yuppie bleeding-heart sleaze.


     


    If you ever use the word "socialist" in this forum again, I'm going to re-quote this screaming, honking misunderstanding of American media history, of American history, of yours. 

  • Reply 115 of 224
    realisticrealistic Posts: 1,154member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Commodification View Post



    Steve Jobs could get those who work for them to do the impossible, but apparently making stuff in the USA and paying their fair share of taxes wasn't one of them.


     




    Show me just ONE instance where Apple hasn't paid every single cent of the taxes that they were legally obligated to pay. Maybe then I'll waste my time trying to educate you as to why Apple products are mostly manufactured in China, since you obviously haven't been able to figure it out for yourself.

  • Reply 116 of 224
    orlandoorlando Posts: 601member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Cpsro View Post


     


     


    What proportion of Apple's operating budget is spent in California? Perhaps that would make a good basis for computing the taxes they should pay on their profits.


     


    Just a thought.



     


    And this is why, the problem will never be fixed.


     


    If California ever tried to make Apple (or any of the other big hi-tech companies) pay more, they would simply pack up and move to a different location. No lawmaker is brave enough for that so corporations will continue to pay very little taxes.

  • Reply 117 of 224
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Commodification View Post


     


     


    It's like how they use to justify slavery in the south when it was legal at the time. If Steve wanted it bad enough he could of brought assembly jobs back to the USA, but like paying their fair share of taxes they found a loop hole bigger than the one that is at the center of Apple's 15 billion dollar future (one ring to rule them all) HQ.


    design-for-apple-hq.jpeg



     


    Dear Mr. Commodification,


     


    Those jobs never existed in the U.S.


     


    EVER.


     


    There never, ever was a microelectronics industry in the U.S., now was there? Did you ever buy an American-made solid-state TV? A video camera? A digital camera? A VCR? A Walkman? A transistor radio? The ecosystem to produce those things has been in Asia for two generations. All the thousands of little-bitty components are made there, aren't they?


     


    You could not produce these things in the U.S. any more than China could produce 747s from scratch. Even if Steve Jobs were running the show.


     


     


     

  • Reply 118 of 224
    realisticrealistic Posts: 1,154member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Commodification View Post


     


     


    It's like how they use to justify slavery in the south when it was legal at the time. If Steve wanted it bad enough he could of brought assembly jobs back to the USA, but like paying their fair share of taxes they found a loop hole bigger than the one that is at the center of Apple's 15 billion dollar future (one ring to rule them all) HQ.



     


    You keep saying Apple isn't paying their fair share of taxes but never provide or cite any proof. Show me just ONE instance where Apple hasn't paid every single cent of the taxes that they were legally obligated to pay.


     


    FIRST You can't bring back assembly jobs when they were not here to start with. Steve didn't create assembly jobs here because he/Apple wanted products that hit certain price points with profit margins that were not and are not possible in the present day USA.


     


    Which company is manufacturing or assembling successful smartphones or successful tablets in the USA? Is there such a company?

  • Reply 119 of 224
    phone-ui-guyphone-ui-guy Posts: 1,019member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by MJ1970 View Post


    I love the word choice here: "sidestepping"...one poster uses the word "dodge".


     


    While both technically correct these terms clearly have a pejorative tone.


     


    Apple is not doing anything wrong. They are doing everything they can (and undoubtedly have a legal responsibility to do for their shareholders) to legally pay the least amount of taxes possible in order to retain as much of the money they've earned for their shareholders and/or to invest in future production and growth.


     


    Good for them. Keep it up Apple! You have no reason to apologize.



     


     


    Exactly...


     


     


    All the bitching about how much Apple pays in taxes is ridiculous. Apple pays what the governments of the world require them to pay. 

  • Reply 120 of 224
    stelligentstelligent Posts: 2,680member


     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    Why Apple finds it necessary to defend themselves publicly against these socialist mouthpieces (Mike Daisey, NY Times) is beyond me. They should just call them up individually late at night, like Steve used to do, and berate them until they cry "Uncle"!



     


    Agree. Apple used to be seem arrogant by virtue of its silence when it should speak out or respond. But it seems to be speaking out too often.

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