frac

It’s a shame many here can’t get Dead Ringers on the BBC site. 
Ordur. Ordur!...OORDUR!! Will the member remove his hand from his pocket!

mwhite said:

DonaldDucko said:

Apple blew it again. It’s too expensive. Over $550 for the cellular model with a decent amount of ram is too expensive. You can buy any number of very good windows laptops for that or less. Would it be a tablet? No. So what. It would be a laptop and much more capable though bigger without the ackward way you have to hold it. Set the screen on a laptop and it’s good to go. Set an iPad down and well it falls flat on its face breaking the glass or falls backwards. 

Apple is in serious doo doo. I’m not sure why they’re worth what they are. They haven’t had a must have product in years and have been playing catch up for a good decade. New home speaker? Not as good as anyone else’s. New iPhone? Good, but it’s a thousand dollars and not really better than any other. The other iphones look the same. iPads to expensive. iMacs? AWOL. MacBooks? Too expensive. On and on.

Sooner or later people are going to wake up and say you know what this premium isn’t worth it. I don’t need the apple logo. I can buy a darn good phone for 1/2 the price. A tablet for 1/2 the price. A laptop for 1/3 the price. Personally I have been waiting and waiting for that next got to have it product and it hasn’t come yet. The Apple Watch was close, but honestly it’s useless. It’s just a gimmick. You don’t need it. Apple better start wowing us and innovating soon. 

And when the Chinese finally get serious watch out everyone.

Troll go away......

Ahem!...April Fool?

volcan said:

gatorguy said:
Heck if we'd all just do a bit more manual labor we wouldn't need gym memberships. Nothing wrong with mowing our own lawns, digging a few holes for the fence posts, or walking up or down a flight of stairs. To me it's silly to hire someone to clean house or dig holes for the new landscaping but pay for a personal trainer to get in shape because you aren't active enough.

Manual labor isn't particularly good for you. Mowing the yard or digging post holes is stressful, especially on the lower back. Yoga, stretching, walking, and even lifting weights (if done correctly) are low impact and condition all of your muscles, and to some degree, your mind. One of the biggest factors for staying healthy and fit though, is your diet and sleep habits. 

Sorry, can’t possibly agree. Physical activity is always good for you, it’s the regime which does the damage. A lard_arse is always going to be an ambulance candidate if sudden exercise is undertaken. As Gatorguy says, there are jobs that get passed on that we could all do, that would help maintain physical health. I can’t speak for the gym generation, I’m an old school Yorkshire Bloody Minded fool, who after a life in construction and engineering, still relishes being able to do the same jobs as a young ‘un. Sanctimonious I am not, I actually enjoy the physical activity and reward of cutting and splitting our two tonnes of wood fuel for next winter in the current one. 
Consequently, I cant find a use case for most of these convenience solutions. 

nht said:

frac said:

boltsfan17 said:

gatorguy said:

AppleInsider said:

The U.S. could conceivably have claimed some of that money if Apple had decided to repatriate it, but the iPhone maker has so far avoided bringing cash back without a promise of lower taxes. Changes advocated by Republicans and the Trump administration could prompt Apple to take action.

...and IMO if they do the EU Commission won't care. 

I think Vestager is honestly convinced she right in trying what she sees as leveling the playing field, attempting to rectify what she perceives as unfair advantages some big multinationals are claiming for themselves to the detriment of smaller companies and individual consumers. She's done so with Google, and she'll do so with Apple. Personally I believe she goes too far, seeing things that just don't exist on the level she thinks they do and applying corrective fixes with too heavy a hand, but I don't think it's just about the tax money from Apple which the EU doesn't get for themselves anyway. Any recovered taxes go to the the individual countries where the tax obligation originates.

The EU should care really. If Apple ends up losing in appeals, the U.S. could fire back at the EU by subjecting European companies to double taxation. 

On what legal basis could the US justify fiinge back by doubling taxation? That would amount to a trade war whereas this is about taxes paid/not payed in the region they were generated. This is not US money per se. 

...

That aside, the EU is definitely making an example of Apple to hammer the point home...it’s just too big a hammer which is probably all Apple can appeal. 

Section 891 of the US tax code allows the president to double tax rates for citizens and corporations of any country the administration considered was discriminating against U.S. companies.

"Whenever the President finds that, under the laws of any foreign country, citizens or corporations of the United States are being subjected to discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes, the President shall so proclaim and the rates of tax imposed by sections 1, 3, 11, 801, 831, 852, 871, and 881 shall, for the taxable year during which such proclamation is made and for each taxable year thereafter, be doubled in the case of each citizen and corporation of such foreign country; but the tax at such doubled rate shall be considered as imposed by such sections as the case may be. In no case shall this section operate to increase the taxes imposed by such sections (computed without regard to this section) to an amount in excess of 80 percent of the taxable income of the taxpayer (computed without regard to the deductions allowable under section 151 and under part VIII of subchapter . Whenever the President finds that the laws of any foreign country with respect to which the President has made a proclamation under the preceding provisions of this section have been modified so that discriminatory and extraterritorial taxes applicable to citizens and corporations of the United States have been removed, he shall so proclaim, and the provisions of this section providing for doubled rates of tax shall not apply to any citizen or corporation of such foreign country with respect to any taxable year beginning after such proclamation is made."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/891

That legal basis.  If we ever had a President that would use the nuclear tax option on the EU, Trump is the one.  

The point is that the EU is making an example of US companies.  

It would sure as hell help the brits out.  Suddenly routing things though UK entities halves the tax burden and gives the UK a significant advantage in Brexit talks.

The fact that the EU is non-competitive isn't the fault of US based multi-nationals having an uneven playing field but because the US culturally is more receptive to disruptive changes whether via technology, politics or culture...its still New World vs Old World mentality.  

The disruption of Microsoft could have just as easily been from a European startup rather than Google.  Tim Berners Lee is a brit that invented the WWW at CERN.  But it was kids at US universities that created Google, Facebook, etc as small companies that disrupted giants.

The EU can go pound sand.  If Trump hammers them with double taxation in response to this BS then he will have done something useful.

Thankyou for the chapter and verse, none of which offers a legal basis for retaliative action by presidential prerogative. As I said, this is not American money being stolen by the EU. It is taxes not paid on profits made in the EU. Perhaps I should remind you that the US Senate found that Apple paid an effective tax rate on its total EU wide profits of less than 2% in 2014. Do you cheer when foreign companies evade paying taxes that support infrastructure, education and social care policies for US citizens? 
As for “making an example of US companies”...such a parochial view. If the cap fits, it’s not by coincidence. Apple, Amazon, Google, McDonald’s, Starbucks er al all using the same (legal) shenanigans is not an example of targeting US companies, but rather that multinational corporations that happen to be US based, are deliberately targetting morally debatable tax evasion procedures that are not available to other companies competing in the same arena. Neither Eire nor Apple were able to point to any other company that was offered the same sweet deal arrangement. Quite how that equates to the EU being non-competitive is a bizarre reversal of the evidence. It’s the multinationals that are creating the uneven playing field. 

How any of this helps us “brits post Brexit is beyond meaningless. 

“...the US culturally is more receptive to disruptive changes whether via technology, politics or culture...its still New World vs Old World mentality.” and “The EU can go pound sand.  If Trump hammers them with double taxation in response to this BS then he will have done something useful.” is just the sort of juvenile irony_desert xenophobic exceptionalism we have come to expect from a certain entitlement corner.  

Kuyangkoh said:

EU is failing....
Apple should move out of there.

Oh Brother!
Would I be justified in opining that the USA is finished because I don’t like some judicial declaration by your government?
...and
Yes...Apple should totally leave $10B per qtr on the table, you’ll be able to celebrate when they immediately hike prices by 50%.