maestro64

davidw said:

bruce young said:

Let's see, Tim Cook gets $14,769,259 annual compensation, plus, I saw an article recently that he had just taken $750 MILLION in stock benefits.

Other Apple execs are making similar outrageous amounts of millions of dollars annual compensation.

  reference: <https://www1.salary.com/APPLE-INC-Executive-Salaries.html >
One would think that they could afford to pay taxes. As would the corporation itself.

As pointed out by a previous posts, they use the land, resources, people, infrastructure of this country, (and it is in dire need of support), so they should be happy to make the country stronger...   yes?   no?

You only "saw" the article, did you bother to READ it before making your ignorant comment? Tim Cook was awarded $750M in vested RSU and paid $390M in income taxes out of the $750M award. You can also bet that he also paid over 50% in incomes taxes (for Fed and State) for his $14.8M annual compensation. And most likely all the Apple executives probably paid in the neighborhood of 50% in incomes taxes on their annual salary. 

If you want to collect the most in taxes from corporations, the best way to do that would be to make sure all the profits are awarded to their top executives as bonuses, instead of being taxed at the corporate rate. Bonuses are considered salary and tax deductible from corporate revenue.

Say that a corporation was looking at reporting $100M in profit, but instead decided to award that $100M to their top executives as bonuses. Now the corporation will end up paying zero corporate tax and you will have a hissy fit over this. BUT, when the $100M was awarded as bonuses, it got taxed as salary. Thus, the government collected 37% Fed income tax (as most execs are probably in the top marginal tax bracket), $1.45% Medicare tax and  maybe about 8% in State income tax (in CA it would be 13%). So out of the $100M, the government got at least $45M in taxes when it was awarded as bonuses vs $21M if it were taxed at the corporate rate.  And this don't include the sales tax generated when the executives spends that money.  

As someone that likes collecting more taxes from others, you should be jumping with joy, that Apple is paying their executives outrages amounts of millions of dollars annual compensation, instead of complaining about it. I guarantee you, the IRS is not complaining about it.    

Apple pays over $40M a year in property taxes on just their "spaceship" HQ. Property taxes (and added bonds measures) pays for local police, fire and ambulance services, parks, public transportation, street lights, sewers, etc.. But most goes toward local education. I'm not aware that Apple is not paying property taxes on any of their properties. Be it vacant land or for an Apple Store. I'm not aware that Apple is getting resources like electricity or gas or water or garbage service, for free. Nor not have to pay the gasoline tax, that pays for road maintenance (or least that's what the gas tax is suppose to be for.), bridge tolls or auto registrations for company cars. Nor are they not paying a good salary to their well educated employees. (who in turn can afford to pay back any student loans they might have gotten.)  

 

tonester said:

And meanwhile Steve Cook just cashed out $750 MILLION in stock. Nothing to see here folks.  Move along folks. Pay is perfectly equitable at Apple. Capitalism is great when you are at the top of the food chain. 

foregoneconclusion said:

Cry me a river. Corporate execs tried to sell the public on a pack of lies back in 2017 about using that tax cut to invest in their employees. Everyone knows they didn't do much more than give themselves raises and do a bunch of stock buybacks. 

CloudTalkin said:

22july2013 said:

goofy1958 said:

harrykatsaros said:

aderutter said:

This will have far reaching effects, so really hope Apple & Google simply pull the app-store from South Korea.
I

100% agree. Pull the stores and leave South Korea scrambling until consumers rip the government a new one for trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. People retaliating against this legislation will prevent other countries from attempting to do the same. Allowing alternative stores opens up the platform to a world of hurt. There’s a reason I don’t use Android. I don’t want my experience as a consumer to be ruined or compromised because some clueless government bureaucrats half way around the world went on some bullshit self righteous crusade in seek of good press.

Just because other app stores are allowed, doesn't mean that you have to download apps from them.  Stick with the Apple app store, and there is no change for you (or me).  I would never go to another app store other than Apple's, so not a big deal to me.  If people want to be stupid and download unknown apps from another site, that is on them, and one thing I really hope Apple does is have some sort of disclaimer that if you do, you may void your warranty.

You make a fair case for consumer freedom. But you don't realize that corporations also have freedom to not be required to provide the software and services to allow for third party app stores. How would you like it if you sold lemonade on your street and were told by the government that you had to sell your neighbor's lemonade and give the profits of that lemonade to your neighbor? Apple works very hard and deserves the right to not have to share its app store profit with its competitors.

Apple sells lemonade cups (iPhones and iPads).  All the kids (devs) in the neighborhood can sell flavors of lemonade(apps) but they have to pour it from the Apple pitcher (App Store) and Apple gets a cut of their sale.  L'il Bobby has his own pitcher and doesn't think he needs to use the Apple pitcher.  He can just pour his lemonade into the customers cup from his pitcher.  Apple says no.  Use my cup, you gotta use my pitcher.  
↑↑↑ That's a more apt description of the situation.   In this little story, most are still going to use the Apple pitcher because it's what they're used to using.  Bobby eventually brings his flavor of lemonade back to the Apple pitcher because not enough people stopped using the Apple pitcher for it to be profitable.