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Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

projekte.sueddeutsche.de

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Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#41

Post by wjnc »

bauerd wrote: post #20
wjnc wrote: post #8

Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter. I think you misunderstand how business works. Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary. Avoidanc…

I'm not sure what your argument is. Is it (a) that tax avoidance is morally justified, (b) morally justified only in the business context or (c) not of concern, because the business and the moral are two separate contexts?

The second one: Taxes are not moral for a corporation, they are a cost and a compliance concern. A world where even tax seeking corporations do not hold tax offices to the letter of the law and the deals they make is a lot more messy than one where corporations follow a clear line: min(Tax | Law abiding). Governments should fix this. I would call this the Peter Drucker way of looking at this.

Morality (let's call it CSR) is a corporate concern. All for that. UN-goals etc. I would mainly point to suppliers, environment, customers as options for corporations to act morally within their functioning as a business. Morality-via-tax argument is second order at best. Who knows if the taxes are justly spend?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#42

Post by beberlei »

wjnc wrote: post #8

Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter. I think you misunderstand how business works. Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary. Avoidanc…

From a business POV I agree about using every means available to reduce taxes and companies must use every means at their disposal for the sake of their shareholders.

BUT as a small business owner I have no chance to get even remotely to the 1-7% tax rate that apple has, instead I look at my 32,5% tax rate and cannot help feeling angry, because I could really put that difference to very good use.

This practice of international tax scheming only benefits the already big companies, the ones that have the least problems of all entities to actually pay taxes.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#44

Post by dontreact »

fastball wrote: post #33
bauerd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your argument is. Is it (a) that tax avoidance is morally justified, (b) morally justified only in the business context or (c) not of concern, because the business and the moral are two separate contexts?

I think tax avoidance is morally justified. EDIT: Better phrasing - I think tax avoidance is not a moral problem. Laws are a moral problem, and tax avoidance is not against the law. /EDIT The entity making the tax code (the government) and the entity that collects taxes (the government) are one in the same. If the government wants me, as an individual or business, to pay taxes at a certain rate X, they should write t…

If there was only a single government in the world that would be true but really there are many governments making and collecting taxes, and their tax codes interact in unexpected ways. At this point I truly believe that it's not possible for a single government to unilaterally avoid such "optimizations" without some help from large multinational corporations leading the charge to coordinate tax codes across countries. I think letters like this are pressuring Apple, which has already claimed to be more morally inclined, to try to help in that effort.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#45

Post by csomar »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
wjnc wrote: post #8

Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter. I think you misunderstand how business works. Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary. Avoidanc…

Dear Tim, You don't understand how shares work. Shareholders can only benefit from shares in two ways: through speculation about the share price or through dividends. I'm kind of disappointed that I'd have to explain to a man of your stature that money that Apple parks abroad will not benefit the shareholders except in the most indirect ways. If Apple brought home their overseas funds then it would benefit the US and…

> Having money parked abroad waiting for a tax amnesty that may never happen

Except that, Trump, (who paradoxically hate tech companies) is pushing for this tax amnesty. In that case parking money aboard paid big time for shareholders.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#46

Post by ZeroGravitas »

wjnc wrote: post #8

Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter. I think you misunderstand how business works. Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary. Avoidanc…

How does this fit into other areas where Apple brands itself as going beyond what is merely not illegal, and sets a high bar for itself?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#48

Post by adventured »

jbaudanza wrote: post #36

If we want the rich to pay more taxes, it would be simpler to just raise taxes on the rich individuals. Things get more complicated when you try to tax an abstraction (a corporation).

Everybody else has already long since figured that out of course and are cutting their corporate income tax rates significantly, while half the political sphere in the US is still arguing about taxing corporations more.

Meanwhile, in Sweden: 22% statutory corporate income tax rate; Finland: 20%; Denmark: 24.5%; Norway 27%. Those horrible socialists!

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#49

Post by onion2k »

wjnc wrote: post #31
jacquesm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear Tim, You don't understand how shares work. Shareholders can only benefit from shares in two ways: through speculation about the share price or through dividends. I'm kind of disappointed that I'd have to explain to a man of your stature that money that Apple parks abroad will not benefit the shareholders except in the most indirect ways. If Apple brought home their overseas funds then it would benefit the US and…

Dear Jacques (i'll stop with the game now ;) - I really emphatise with the social responsibility part of the story. The game Apple is playing with stored cash abroad is abject. Nobody is profiting from that. But we can agree that it's not the nature of a corporation to pay more taxes than necessary? If people offer you crazy deals: agree. Governments should coordinate not to make crazy offers and perhaps even tit-for…

Governments should coordinate not to make crazy offers and perhaps even tit-for-tat those that do.

A preferable alternative would be for customers to consider a company's ethics in their purchasing decisions, and to encourage their peers to do the same. If it became socially unacceptable to have a new iPhone because of Apple's choice to pay such a trivial amount of tax (legal or otherwise, that's besides the point) you can be absolutely certain Apple would quickly stop funnelling money to tax havens, and they'd probably have a big marketing drive about how much they care about paying tax to fund better wages and welfare for soldiers, teachers and nurses too.

Social pressure is far more powerful than governments. It's just harder to 'control'.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#50

Post by lucozade »

jarym wrote: post #5

"Such “tax optimization” – albeit legal – is only possible because specialized law firms such as Appleby devise complex company structures inaccessible to most other firms" Maybe governments should simplify their own tax rules. Then you wouldn't need specialised law firms and simpler tax systems are harder to bypass. To add, there is nothing 'moral' about tax - you have no choice but to pay what you're legally obliga…

> Maybe governments should simplify their own tax rules

I can't see that happening. Tax policy is used by most governments as a fine grained tool for all forms of signalling. Not just economic either: alcohol, tobacco, fuel, renewables etc. all use the tax systems to promote social change.

It's also quite handy for deflection i.e. if your economy's not doing as well as you'd want in an election cycle, blame the elites. Hell of a lot easier than actually making any real change as that's too hard to do without pissing off voters.

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