Gymkhana

blitz1 said:

Soli said:

AdBrit said:

In the end, all this is Apple trying to avoid paying taxes, something all of us do compliantly without begging for exception. Apple and other Corporations are simply moochers of a countries wealth whether that be the consumer's dollars or the consumer's labour. They are transient welfare bums.

What should a corporation do? Pay taxes beyond what they are legally obligated to pay in order to appease you? I certainly have accountants looking for every possible way I can reduce how much I legally owe the gov't. You don't do that?

Legally obligated to pay in Ireland is 12,5%.
Not 1%, not 0.005%

Too funny, and there are pro-multinational zombies out there, representing on behalf of the big multinational corporations, by giving dislikes to your remarks.  As if these big multinational corporations would do anything but squash these little fanboys like the cockroaches they are.  Would sure be nice if Apple and other multinational corporations actually paid a rate close to what individual taxpayers pay here in the US.

Yeah, go ahead, Timmy, relocate the damn company to Turkey.  Try and scam yet another nation out of paying your taxes.

Timmy, plain and simple, you are a greedy corporate shill.  jungmark said:

franklinjackcon said:

latifbp said:

adm1 said:

Calling the move "unprecedented," Cook portrayed the Commission's decision as potentially dangerous, with "serious, wide-reaching implications." 

EC previously ruled against Starbucks's tax deal in Holland and Fiat's tax deal in Luxembourg. Not unprecedented.

"In Apple's case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States," he wrote. "European companies doing business in the U.S. are taxed according to the same principle. But the Commission is now calling to retroactively change those rules."

There is no law that states you should only be taxed where your R&D offices are located. There ARE laws however that say you pay tax where you operate and sell products. On top of that, funnelling profits from those sales to other countries while not technically illegal, is morally questionable. Similar to those with offshore accounts (cayman islands, panama etc.) albeit nowhere near as shady.

$14.5 billion is unprecedented as well as is the recent attempts to gouge U.S. companies for extra. In the U.S. European companies do not face a corporation tax, but simple sales and VAT. Maybe we'll retroactively apply a new law and start vouching your companies. BMW... want to keep selling your cars here now you gotta pay an extra 12.5% on your profits here even though you're based in Europe. Too bad, so sad. Same tax deal since 1980. Apple never asked for anything different. 

Forget it's Apple for a second or even that it's retroactive. Do you agree in principle that corporations should pay fair tax on their profits? Apple is using Ireland as a tax haven to avoid paying tax in Europe and the US. If these corporations would pay tax in the US then these tax haven shell companies wouldn't exist but they aren't. If BMW/VW wasn't paying tax in Europe, I don't think anyone would object to the US collecting it so your example doesn't work

What is "fair share"? Apple's effective tax rate in the US is 25%. 

25% would be fine, but they don't even want to pay US taxes.  Apple is a tax cheat, period.  The rest of us all pay anywhere between 15-35% effective tax rate.  Why should Apple, since "corporations are people", escape paying their fair share?  Apple is a greedy, tax-evading, multi-national scammer, finding the cheapest wages anywhere around the world that they can.  Ireland loves them, even though they're not paying taxes, because it makes the politicians look good, by bringing in a "big corporation" and lowering the unemployment rate.  But once again, the government is being funded by the peoples' income taxes, not by Apple, which is paying something like <1% tax rate to Ireland.  That's the definition of a tax cheat.  Scumbags.  If not the EU, and if not China, someone needs to put fire to Apple's feet and make they pay their taxes.  And I would need proof to see that Apple actually pays 25% effective tax rate in the US.  No large corporations pay anywhere near that in the US, in spite of what right wingers and libertarians whine and cry about.

fred1 said:

Gymkhana said:

Love how all the fanboys and multinational corporation supporters show up to defend tax cheating.  Apple uses "the commons" to conduct their trade, and to draw billions in profits.  They have the obligation to help fund the infrastructure and tax base that they use.  If you still say no, then let's force Apple to build their own electrical grids, water supplies, shipping defense military, etc.  Let Apple become their own legal world entity, a nation unto their own, and we'll see how successful they can be.  Dimwits, freeloaders, tax cheats.

The problem is that it's not cheating.  It's exactly the same thing that Apple does in the US.  As Uncle Tim said in his testimony before Congress, Apple pays all of the taxes it's required to pay based on US tax laws.  In the case of Ireland, the government set things up for just this reason: give people a place to set up their businesses with very low taxes and they'll move their operations here and hire locals, even if a lot of this is on paper only.  
If the eurocrats were doing what they should, they be after Ireland for having tax rates like this and not go after the companies that have followed the letter of the law and benefitted from it.  The point isn't whether what Ireland and Apple do is right or wrong, it's whether it's legal.  Is it legal for a country to set its corporate tax rate so low.  Of course it is!  Is it legal for a company to take advantage of this and save billions on taxes?  Of course it is.  
It's like the US government going after the state of New Hampshire for not charging a sales tax or the state of Washington for not having a state income tax.  

And all of this is absurd because the EU didn't lose one penny over this, Ireland did!  Ireland pays its money into the EU kitty whether or not its tax rate is 2% or 15% or 30%. Just as the US government doesn't lose money because Oregon has no sales tax.  Who knows how soon it'll be before there's an EU income tax and not just one for each country.

That's fine, except Ireland is breaking the rules too.  They need to Brexit if they don't want to participate in the EU's tax system.  Apple chose a nation where they could avoid paying their fair share to "the commons".  That is the definition of a tax cheat, trying to get something for nothing.  There's no free lunch.  I say "fine", let Apple have no corporate taxes.  But let no nation spend one penny on military by defending shipping channels for Apple's products.  Let no nation spend one penny regulating airways for Apple's cargo shipments, those will have to find their own way there by some other means.  Unless of course Apple wants to create their own Air Traffic Control system, their own military, their own international court system, their own roadways.  They have every right to the freedoms that they seek from paying into the system.  They have the freedom to create their own infrastructure, and pay for it on their own.  Maybe Apple should get their own island as a base for all operations.  They will own everything on that island.  Then it's up to them to get their products to market, pay for their own defense, build their own court systems on their island, create their own treasury department, their own water filtration plants, electrical plants, roads.  That's the freedom Apple needs, and deserves.  Who in the f**k do people think pays for all those "commons" that Apple benefits from?  And they get it for 1 freaking per cent in taxes?  How f**king deluded can people be?

patkelly said:

Yeah right Tim.  Nice letter but you forgot to mention the corporate greed that is the real issue you should be addressing.  Surely you don't believe that if Apple did not create the 1.5 million jobs you spoke of, those jobs would never have been created by other companies such as the ones that never introduced the orange-phone by orange computer.  Like any other large corporate entity you have actively fought to take as big a piece of the consumer market pie as you could thereby limiting the potential growth of other companies you have seen as competitors you needed to restrain or eliminate.  So before you boast about all you have done for society you should ask yourself how things might be different if all the money you have tied up Apple were more broadly dispersed throughout a more diverse corporate community that surely would have brought a broader mix of more innovative products to consumers.  Paying your share of taxes is the least Apple should do in return for all it has gotten from the community you wrongly claim owes you a debt of gratitude.  It's the other way around Tim and you should try not to forget that. 

All great points, but unfortunately Timmy will be tone-deaf to any such discussion, as he laughs all the way to the bank with his hundreds of millions in stock benefits and salary.  At those pay levels, there is no way that he could ever understand or appreciate how disconnected he is from reality.  This kind of greed is all-consuming, never-ending, knows no bounds or limits, is blinding, is the ultimate temptation.  Look to the Mylan CEO for similar acts of greed.  Just keep taking and taking, enrich the few at the top at the expense of anyone else you can step on.  Disgusting.