joogabah

wigby said:

Marvin said:

SpamSandwich said:

Tax rates are arbitrary anyway. There were no tax "losses" involved here. 

Were people dying in the streets because Apple had this deal, lo these many years? I don't think so. People in Ireland received the benefit of Apple being in their territory and Apple received the benefit of their tax arrangement.

The rates aren't completely arbitrary, they are weighed up against the public need: number of older people in retirement, number of people needing healthcare, military budgets, unemployment, infrastructure costs. The costs vary based on the population of a country, which is why companies prefer to declare taxes in low population countries. Ireland has around half the population of London, their budget is ~58b euros (~12k euros per person). Apple makes close to that in net income every year. With a 25% rate, they'd cover around 1/4 of Ireland's entire budget on their own so Ireland doesn't need this amount from them.

However, Ireland's budget is not the issue because only a tiny fraction of the income was made in Ireland. There's a vast amount of infrastructure, services, employees across all the countries where Apple does business, which they have used in order to conduct their business safely and effectively. You can compare this to developing countries where that infrastructure doesn't exist and doing business there is much harder. Those countries have tax rates that are based on those infrastructure costs. When companies don't pay their share of it and instead find ways to funnel it back to shareholders, the cost becomes a budget deficit and is displaced onto the working classes. The result is retirement ages go up, sometimes taxes are adjusted and it lowers quality of life for people, while furthering the gap between different income groups.

It's not a burden to Apple to pay the expected rates in other countries just as they do in the US, they are the wealthiest company in the world by a pretty wide margin and they agreed to each country's tax rates when they started doing business. If a company doesn't agree to the rates then they don't do business there instead of benefiting from it and skipping out when the bill arrives.

So if Apple wasn't the wealthiest company in the world it would be a burden? What if they were losing money and going bankrupt? You're letting a bias coerce you. Should rich people pay more than their "fair share" just because they're rich or should they pay what they are legally required to pay?

lkrupp said:

So we as a society must accept the fact that if we want to remain free a good number of us must be prepared to die in terrorist attacks? Is that what this argument boils down to? 

— You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack

— You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack

— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane

— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack

— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack

— You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack

–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack

–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack

—You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist

–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack

— You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-people-stupid.html