Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

projekte.sueddeutsche.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 817 posts

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#591

Post by Melchizedek »

jimbokun wrote: post #489
Clanan wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you seriously look at the state of politics and business and tax evasion in 2017 and really believe most executives, even in Silicon Valley, are susceptible to "moral persuasion"? If they were, they would already be acting in the way you think they should.

True, but what then can stop this evil entity called Apple and all the rest of them?

Only children and the very slow still believe in "democracy", which is obviously just another name for the rule of those who own the media and/or are rich enough to bribe politicians.

What other recourse is left but the threat of violence to the physical individuals that in reality control the imaginary legal persons called corporations?

Too bad what passes for the "left" these days is busy fawning over Tim Cook's homosexuality while the sick become homeless and the globalists vacuum the earth for profits. It almost makes me long for the days when the left was Marxist and we had the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades, instead of blue hair lesbians and postmodern identity politics.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#592

Post by tengbretson »

jamesblonde wrote: post #540
valuearb wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tax things you want less of, not more if. Taxing corporate profits is a tax on investment. Apples actual income tax rate is in excess of 60% if they repatriate. First, they have to pay corporate income taxes in all their foreign countries. Then, they owe 9% to state of California on what’s left. Then they owe 35% to the US treasury on what’s left. Then they pay the remainder as dividends, and shareholders owe up…

But you know that even if you eliminated corporate tax, companies would not pay out profits as dividends, if there was a loophole around it. And there are loads, of course. Share buybacks, for example.

From the perspective of an investor, there's really not all that much difference between a buyback and dividends.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#593

Post by d393k02397 »

gaius wrote: post #576
peoplewindow wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police and roads aren't services provided to Apple. They're services provided to you . I've never once seen a corporation travelling down a road - has anyone else? The only government services corporations specifically use re legal services like courts and patent offices. Those have fees attached and in the USA the PTO is actually a profit center, so tax is irrelevant. There's no moral argument for taxing artificial…

Tee hee, do iPhones teleport all the way from China into your hand then?

>what is import tax

>what is road tax

>what is sales tax

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#595

Post by nobodyorother »

Roodgorf wrote: post #481
tskaiser wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If companies are duty-bound to act unethically (if legally) for the sake of share holder profits then I think that speaks to a flaw in the system driving these decisions.

But they aren't, not even in Delaware. That's a common misconception that greedy folks love to spread.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#596

Post by pc86 »

pjc50 wrote: post #507
pc86 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain the difference between "tax loophole" and "tax law."

With a so-called "general anti-avoidance rule" (GAAR) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-avoidance-gen... Effectively if your tax arrangements are weird enough they have to be submitted to a judicial-like body to determine whether they are for some sort of legitimate business purpose or purely for the purpose of tax avoidance. An example: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... "Pa…

How is this different than "we will make [legal thing] illegal if all it does is save you money"?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#597

Post by apendleton »

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?

You're acting like laws are an unmoving fundamental property of the universe. In reality these very companies have reshaped the laws to their own advantage. Companies that lobby on tax policy demonstrably pay lower taxes; see e.g., https://sunlightfoundation.com/2012/04/16/lobby-more-pay-les...

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#598

Post by amag »

billmalarky wrote: post #318
Clanan wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it." I suspect that you and your partner have significantly more control over your enterprise than the officer…

> if that share price takes a huge hit it becomes very hard to attract and maintain talent/future investment/etc.

OTOH, by paying taxes you make sure there is a talent pool to recruit from in the future.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#599

Post by Cakez0r »

Swinx43 wrote: post #466
Cakez0r wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting case to bring up. In the UK, it is very common (I'd go as far as to say it's the norm) for software contractors to start a single-person limited company and pay themselves through a mixture of salary and dividend in order to optimise their taxes. I wonder how many of these people consider that they are committing "tax avoidance" and "exploiting legal loopholes" too.

That is a common misconception due to tax law changes in recent years. It used to be the case that a UK contractor paying themselves through this structure was significantly better off due to the large amount of dividend tax credits that were available. So let me outline how this works these days as I run up against this argument a lot. 1) Any income that comes into the UK Ltd company is taxed at the corporate tax ra…

Thanks for your very thorough reply! I will definitely run the numbers when I get back home.

One thing I noticed from a first reading: You didn't include the expenses payments as income (intentionally or not), which is an extra £5000 a year that goes in to your personal bank account.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#600

Post by antaviana »

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…

Most of the taxes a company actually pays are factored in with their workers' salaries. For example, if your company's average salary is lower to that of Apple for a comparable employee profile, you are effectively paying less taxes than Apple.

Or, if you company does not have profits, you are paying less taxes than a company that reports profits.

I do not think a company has to wear any nation flag. Companies have to care for their customers, employees and shareholders (in that order), wherever these are based.

Lawmakers need to care for their citizens, and need to legislate in a way that optimizes their tax collection in a sustainable way (i.e. lawmakers do not want companies or people fleeing to other countries or regions).

The resulting scenario is an optimal equilibrium of forces.

Post reply on HN