radarthekat
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Apple slams story of cash hidden in Jersey to reduce taxes, calls itself 'largest taxpayer...
Your argument neglects the provision in tax law that recognizes that not ALL the value of an iPhone sold in , say, Belgium, should be attributed to Belgium. Much of the design and engineering and the software, is developed in the United States. Are you suggesting the US should not recieve its fair share against every iPhone sold worldwide for the engineering and design talent that resides and creates within its borders? The law would disagree with you on that, and Apple goes by the law.78Bandit said:Apple is doing whatever it can to avoid tax. Is all of it legal? I'm sure it meets the letter of the law in the country in which the tax shelter is formed but likely is being abused. I used to work in public accounting and would see it all the time as companies worked to minimize their taxes. Many companies were organized in Delaware where there wasn't a corporate income tax. They set up a management company in Delaware with a few employees and then would then set up subsidiary companies (hospitals in the case of the companies I worked on) as required to operate in the various states. At year end the management company charged an "operating fee" to the subsidiary companies substantially equal to their profit which effectively eliminated any state-level income tax.
Apple is doing something extremely similar except on a multi-national level rather than an intrastate level. They are being very disingenuous with the statement "we are paying all the taxes we owe" when you look at their revenue sources. If their income were taxed in the location where the sales actually took place then they would owe a whole lot more. It is only through convoluted tax shelters and the cooperation of small countries that reap extraordinary benefit for hosting those tax shelters that Apple can say with a straight face they are following the law.
The law needs to be reformed to eliminate the arbitrary shifting of profits to tax havens and instead provide for a true evaluation of where the money was earned. Here's one possible way: take the overall profit for the company and allocate it based on the percentage of revenue received from each country. If the United States accounted for 1/3 of total revenue then Apple should pay tax on 1/3 of it's overall profit based on U.S. tax codes.
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Apple slams story of cash hidden in Jersey to reduce taxes, calls itself 'largest taxpayer...
Absolutely. You can see from Apple’s filings that a good deal of it is invested in US Treasuries and other securities, like mortgage backed securities. It earns about 1%, by the way. So yeah, it’s relatively safe. The notion of the money being ‘offshore’, the expert should have gone on to say, is not where the money isphysically held, but is rather a legal status of the money for taxation purposes. Apple cannot spend that money here in the states on capital projects, R&D, share buybacks, dividends, etc, until it is repatriated (another legal term that doesn’t suggest physical movement of the cash).maestro64 said:I read an article a while back by an international banking expert, this news is not new. This guy said anyone who thinks that US companies international earning are sitting in an off shore bank is fouling themselves. It may be sitting in international bank, but most likely the actual account and money is in US bank, most likely NYC. The expert said no US company would want to leave that kind of cash off shore, they would want to maintain control over that money and not let the control be done outside the US. -
Apple slams story of cash hidden in Jersey to reduce taxes, calls itself 'largest taxpayer...
You seem to have a very loose grip on this situation. What Apple is doing is deferring taxes by holding profits outside the US. That’s legal, and for very good reason. US companies that earn profits outside the US have the option of spending those profits outside the US, to grow operations, build factories or retail outlets, acquire companies, etc. Profit so spent will never be repatriated and therefore will never be subject to US taxes. And indeed, Apple does invest/spend some of its foreign profits in this manner. So companies have a perfect right to hold profits overseas while weighing their best use. In Apple’s case, the company apparently feels that a change to the tax rate for repatriated profits would tip the balance toward repatriating a significant amount of those profits, but without a reduction in the tax rate feels it should wait, keeping its options open. The rest is merely the specific mechanics of where the profits are domiciled to be held outside the US. And there’s nothing illegal about Apple’s practices in that regard, nor is what Apple doing something not available to any other corporation that wishes to apply the resources (tax experts) to do so. In fact, it’s been reported that many other corporations do exactly the same, including Google, GE, etc.avon b7 said:
I take a slightly different viewpoint. Earnings are made in tax years and rules apply to those years. Whatever the rules are, companies in any given tax jurisdiction, should abide by those rules and push for a change in tax legislation if they consider them to be unfair.unphocus said:Why is it so high a tax rate for US company to bring home earnings? It’s like the US Government doesn’t want US multinational company to bring back any earnings to the US. High repatriation tax rate makes company looks for loopholes to pay less taxes. The US Congress should be saying “we see what’s happening; let’s reduce repatriation tax rate to make is easy for company to bring back earning from abroad so these companies can use the money to create more jobs” or something to that nature. It boggles my mind the stupidity of high repatriation tax rate.
From a moral perspective, I believe witholding payment of taxes until such a time is 'right' for the company, is wrong. As is the idea that a company itself, can determine how much to make available for taxation. Especially if that same option is not open to competitors.
You can be sure that some here will roll out the shareholder argument and that Apple must do all it can to maximise it's return to shareholders, even if it means employing questionable accounting practices. That is missing the point entirely.
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Rumor claims Apple cutting iPhone 8 production orders in half
This year Apple has the broadest line of iPhones they’ve ever had, from five models last year to eight this year, once the X begins shipping. Between those waiting to order an X and those taking advantage of life wer prices across much of the line, it’s reasonable to expect meaningful reduction in demand for the 8/8+ versus the 7/7+ last year.
The question is really, where is demand for iPhone this year versus past years? As long as demand remains strong for iPhone (the entire line, in aggregate) then I expect the higher end, higher priced models will outweigh any drag on revenue from Apple having a broader array of lower-priced models on sale. That and increased demand for lower priced models resulting in higher overall sales volumes of those. Apple is skating to where the puck will be, in six to nine months, when X production is in balance with demand. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, Apple will have sold more overall units while also retaining or even increasing ASPs, averaged over the full period from launch of the 8/repricing of the full broadened line to that day in the future when X supply is in balance with demand. Apple doesn’t play the game to be ahead at the end of each quarter; they play a longer game than Wall St.
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Supreme Court asks Trump administration for thoughts on App Store pricing lawsuit
You own the hardware, whether iPhone or iPad in this case. So you should be allowed, and are allowed, to do with it what you want. Want to break it open and figure out how to run Windows or Android or Linux on it? Go for it. It’s yours, do as you like. But don’t expect Apple to assist in that effort.
However, you license the OS, which remains the property of Apple, and Apple has a right to control what happens with its property, much the way a movie theater has the right to prohibit patrons bringing in their own food. If a movie theater wants to sell popcorn at a 1000% markup, then you have the choice of watching the movie without popcorn, or going somewhere else to watch the movie. If Apple, which spent untold billions of dollars building, testing, marketing and supporting iOS wants to create a store within that property where they are the only seller of goods that can be consumed within that property, then I don’t see this as different from a movie theater deciding who can sell snacks to its patrons and collecting a percentage of the take.
