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How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

bbc.co.uk

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Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#241

Post by osteele »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #205
osteele wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you make it clear there will never be a tax holiday, but that you will instead keep adjusting the rules to go after earnings withheld abroad, at some point the rational choice for them will be to bite the bullet and repatriate the income. Another rational choice is to relocate the company, a la Burger King's move to Canada [1,2]. Then the government can counter with tariffs [3,4]. It's a balancing act, though. […

> It's a balancing act, though. At the end of the day, there is no way you as a corporation can entirely subvert a nation state. I find it odd even that rational individuals think its possible against an adversary (typically with effectively unlimited resources) that can tariff you, dissolve your organization, and even jail you.

It's a balancing act, not (just) an arms race. As a government, raise corporate taxes too high, and corporations leave and/or overseas corporations outcompete them and/or new corporations form overseas instead of domestically. Raise tariffs too high, and domestic consumer choice and quality decrease, and consumer purchasing power decreases. These aren't consequences that dissolving your domestic corporations or jailing their managers address.

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#242

Post by rconti »

enraged_camel wrote: post #197
namelost wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the US to start taxing Apple's foreign income abroad is not like taxing an American living in Ireland (and even that is crazy). It's like if the US started taxing an Irish person in Ireland[1]. However obvious it is that EU Apple is a sock puppet of US Apple, directly imposing taxes on foreign companies operating in foreign countries would be met with retaliation. It is not a smart nor a profitable trade policy.…

>>For the US to start taxing Apple's foreign income abroad is not like taxing an American living in Ireland (and even that is crazy). It's like if the US started taxing an Irish person in Ireland[1]. I'm not sure I follow. Apple is an American company.

It would be more akin to the US taxing a dual American/Irish citizen living abroad. Which they do. You cannot just pretend not to be a US citizen when convenient.

Of course, typically you aren't taxed on the first $100k of income abroad, but likely businesses have similar carve-outs...

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#243

Post by gaius »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #218
alasdair_ wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At the end of the day, there is no way you as a corporation can entirely subvert a nation state. There are countless examples of this happening, from the East India Company (who essentially ruled India for a century) to the United Fruit Company to present-day Shell Oil.

Can you provide an example present day of a company successfully subverting the US government? To my knowledge, they're even pursuing companies successfully outside of their jurisdiction (Kim Dotcom/MEGA).

Halliburton?

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#244

Post by specialist »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
nautilus12 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that rather than taxing the middle class more that we should simply make large corporations like Apple actually follow the existing tax laws? Owing to its source it doesn't sound like this idea is going to be popular on hacker news, in spite of its blatant rationality.

> we should simply make large corporations like Apple actually follow the existing tax laws Apple is in compliance with our tax laws. The laws, not Apple, are the underlying problem.

Letter of the law vs the spirit.

Play many board games? I have. With any sufficiently complicated ruleset, there are always cheats, exploits, holes.

To have a good time together, players often agree to play in the spirit of the game, vs the literal rules.

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#245

Post by slavik81 »

charlesdm wrote: post #193
slavik81 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's insufficient. Most of the world has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. The Cayman Islands might be the most attractive place to park their funds, but pretty much anywhere would still be more attractive than bringing it to the US.

Lowering the US corporate tax rate to say 10 or 15% is the only reasonably feasible solution. Incentivize companies to book profits in the US. Then increase the dividend tax rate to compensate (depending on if this ends up being tax neutral or not -- it might very well be tax neutral given the extra profits that would be booked in the US)

That's more or less what I would suggest. Though, I would probably put the rate at 25% and only tax domestic profits. That would bring US policy in line with the rest of the G7. Raising taxes on dividends and capital gains to make it revenue neutral is also a good idea.

At the moment, tax policy basically penalizes companies bringing money earned in other countries home into the United States. It's stupid. Tax holidays are also stupid. Fix the problem at its heart.

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#246

Post by GCU-Empiricist »

mitchty wrote: post #55
GCU-Empiricist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a board's fiduciary duty to their stockholders? To put it differently would you buy stock in a board that doesn't act this way, would a mutual fund? Which way do you expect the mutual fund's proxies to vote when electing the board? Multi-polar coordination (competition markets) have a lot of bad Nash-equilibrium states, but they are better than any command market in history.

No, it is not a boards fiduciary duty to maximize profits at the expense of all else for stockholders. This is a myth. There is no legal basis for this claim. https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism So to take your differently put question, would I buy stock in a company that doesn't act this way? Hell yes I would. It means they're likely adults and not just looking out purely for the bottom line.…

>https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism

Thanks; Intresting. A look at what the duties are might be this: http://www.oecd.org/daf/ca/corporategovernanceprinciples/187...

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#247

Post by opo »

MichaelGG wrote: post #230
anigbrowl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove it. I think companies like being in the US because of the sophisticated capital markets, strong and predictable legal environment, and deep pockets of American consumers. I'd like some evidence instead of hyperbole.

Huawei and Samsung seem to be operating in the US just fine.

Oh, would you then also force Samsung to pay US taxes on all profits it made in Korea and elsewhere? The same for Huawei and the profits it makes in China?

For obvious reasons, no other developed country in the world has a corporate tax system like the US. We should try to reform it, not make it worse.

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#249

Post by crdoconnor »

osteele wrote: post #241
toomuchtodo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a balancing act, though. At the end of the day, there is no way you as a corporation can entirely subvert a nation state. I find it odd even that rational individuals think its possible against an adversary (typically with effectively unlimited resources) that can tariff you, dissolve your organization, and even jail you.

It's a balancing act, not (just) an arms race. As a government, raise corporate taxes too high, and corporations leave and/or overseas corporations outcompete them and/or new corporations form overseas instead of domestically. Raise tariffs too high, and domestic consumer choice and quality decrease, and consumer purchasing power decreases. These aren't consequences that dissolving your domestic corporations or jaili…

>As a government, raise corporate taxes too high, and corporations leave

Only when there's almost no cost to leaving, which in itself is a tax loophole. If you declare that residency is about where you do the most business and has nothing to do with which letterbox has the word "headquarters" on it then their reaction would be limited to tantrums in Wall Street Journal op eds.

>or overseas corporations outcompete them

That's not how corporation tax works. It's paid on profits and does not affect the competitiveness of the firm.

Re: How Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its Irish tax practices

#250

Post by hashmal »

komali2 wrote: post #5

If you unplugged Apple's board (or given decision-making apparatus) and plugged in a (currently nonexistent) AI with the parameter "Maximize Profit," would you see a different result? I think not. I think we'd see things far more morally horrifying, in fact, with just enough PR makeup to ensure "maximized profit." Unsure why we laud capitalism and then act horrified at the result. Here in America we've made our decis…

It is easy to blame Apple (and other big companies) when the real problem is that governments are incapable of taming these companies.
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