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Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

projekte.sueddeutsche.de

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Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#451

Post by slivym »

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…

Apple is the largest corporation in the world by market cap. It does not find itself drifting like a plastic bag in the wind. Apple spends over $5m per year on lobbyists. A sum that no regular business would be able to afford - a form of influence on government that is fundamentally exclusively available to megacorporations like Apple. That's in the US alone where Apple already has extremely favourable tax conditions.

Apple is not guilty of tax avoidance, Apple is guilty of paying legislators to change laws in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. At a time when the US Federal government is running a deficit Apple's lobbying spending has reached record highs and legislation to reduce corporate taxes are proposing record low rates.

Land of the expensive, home of silent CEO hiding from questions about dodgy tax affairs.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#452

Post by ThrwyAct »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #243
styx31 wrote: post #80

What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can't evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate. But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies/holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate. So, what? The tax rate of a country is now "artificial", because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because th…

I feel the other solutions is obvious in that we need to align tax law to meet the global mobility of money, in the same way we aligned trading laws. Something like; 1) A group like the WTO/G12 get together and agree to minimum tax rate for any corporate/country/individual that wants to do business and or have access to these economies/nations. Any company/individual that earns income in lower tax rate countries is f…

This, plus sanctions on tax havens.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#453

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

tyingq wrote: post #240
loceng wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

> They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though.

There are many cases where legal != moral, an that's the very point of the article.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#454

Post by chii »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #235
repomies691 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whe…

Think about it this way, if I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes. They hurt innovation. And that money is supposed to go to governments to use, which it doesn't, hampering the ability for others to thrive. Now there's is less competition

> I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes.

why would that happen? unless apple uses their tax dodged profits to directly prevent you from operating, which would be illegal to do in the first place.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#455

Post by tskaiser »

Clanan wrote: post #281
tyingq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

The fix can certainly involve appealing to morals and human responsibility. A company is, after all, just a group of people. This should be a very strong tactic considering how liberal Silicon Valley is. The major players preach constantly about progressive ideals, yet fail to do more than the minimum when push comes to shove. My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax re…

IANAL but it is my understanding that if those tax reduction schemes are legal many companies are legally bound by their stock holders to exploit them, or else be found negligent in their duties.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#456

Post by chii »

Joe-Z wrote: post #246
repomies691 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whe…

Wow, "Let them eat cake" is the first thing that sprang into my mind upon reading your comment. Yes, having good phones and laptops surely is something great. But we're talking here about a vast and growing gap between the rich and the poor, and if you're slaving away in your shit-town on your minimum wage job you don't give a damn about how awesome your life is now thanks to the iPhone.

> slaving away in your shit-town on your minimum wage job

but does that have anything to do with coporate tax dodge? Or is that really a failure in education (which may be due to tax dodges in-so-far as the lack of education funding)?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#457

Post by fastball »

n4r9 wrote: post #154
fastball wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the moral burden is not on Apple, it's on those graduates. If you got your education for free and now you make a fat salary from Apple, it's your job to give back. Not Apple's.

Why is the burden not on both? Both Apple and the graduates are profiting from the subsidised education.

Because a corporation is not a person? It's a collection of individuals, and if you are taxing all of the individuals fairly why do you need to tax the collective as well?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#458

Post by sseveran »

DomreiRoam wrote: post #314
tyingq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

I think they are often engaged in illegal activities but it is difficult to prove it. A company and its subsidiaries are different entities and when you do an IP transfer between them where a huge set of patent and trademark is exchanged for 1 euros and then used back for millions, one of the company has been wronged. Try to do the same shenanigan with a LTD and yourself and you will very fast see what the IRS (or eq…

This is just downright false. There is an entire field inside the tax world called transfer pricing. You cannot just transfer significant IP to a foreign entity for $1 and expect that you will only need to pay tax on that $1. The IRS will come up with its own determination of what the value of the transferred asset is if it disagrees with your valuation and assess taxes based upon that. Now companies and the IRS frequently disagree on what the value should be and do end up in court. Law firms have teams of in-house economists to build defensible models of what the value of the transferred asset should be. Additionally the OECD has issued significant guidance on the topic.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#459

Post by chii »

urza wrote: post #334
gyaru wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't understand if you're being ironic or not, but I hope you are because Microsoft has been under fire for a long time for their behaviour and even fined for it in the past. No "invisible hand" there, more like someone yelling loudly at them.

Do you really believe the fines Microsoft was ordered to pay had any effect on the direction of the company? It was on a level of mosquito bite for them. What really forced them to change in last few years is the changing landscape of the whole IT ecosystem. Their market shares dropping, because there are viable alternatives, new kinds and classes of products, the whole opensource movement etc etc. So yes, the invisi…

the IE monopoly did stifle web development for yonks! If they weren't forced to drop IE from being pre-installed, i'd say web development would've still be lagging behind today.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#460

Post by fastball »

jaymzcampbell wrote: post #155
fastball wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the moral burden is not on Apple, it's on those graduates. If you got your education for free and now you make a fat salary from Apple, it's your job to give back. Not Apple's.

Unless Apple are running a break-even charity they are making money on each employee - which I would guess is due to a combination of the employees skill (gained in some way through this "free" education) and the business as a whole. In what way is there no obligation on Apple the company to pay back to society? One of the whole points of being a full time employee (as opposed to contracting under your own company) -…

When you say "they are making money", who do you mean exactly?

A company is a collection of individuals and in the case of a public corporation, shareholders. Are not all of these participants paying their fair share of taxes?

The employees pay income tax, the shareholders should be paying taxes on dividends or capital transactions or what not.

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