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Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

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Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#181

Post by dingo_bat »

evgen wrote: post #173
dingo_bat wrote: post #163

How hard is it to solve the tax problem? France should abolish all income taxes, and put a 100% sales tax on iphone. Problem solved. Apple can dodge as much income taxes as they want.

Then Apple stops selling in France and continues to sell in Belgium, Germany, Spain, etc and people drive them into France by the truckload. Or Amazon just delivers them via post. No taxes to France at all. Problem solved.

That's ok. I'm sure sales will take a substantial hit if people cannot walk into a store and buy it. I mean there's a reason Apple sells directly in France, right?

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#183

Post by mschuster91 »

rapind wrote: post #179
mschuster91 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd respect activism advocating for simplified, hard to game tax codes more. The problem is: the simpler the tax code, the easier it is to game. There's a reason why tax codes are universally huge and complex, and it's not just because of politicians giving tax favors to their donors.

I couldn't disagree more. In my experience, complexity breeds corruption whereas simplicity exposes it. For example, how would you game a flat tax?

> For example, how would you game a flat tax?

Imagine a car manufacturer, headquartered in Germany where all of the R&D happens, and most sales outside of Germany.

Germany has invested lots of money into its education system so that the car manufacturer has a very large pool of talented and qualified personnel, but with a cash flow tax the manufacturer pays the most of his taxes in the respective countries, thus depriving the German state of the resources it needs to provide the companies in Germany with qualified personnel.

In the current scenario Germany loses tax money due to evasion, in the flow tax scenario it would lose tax money because it's paid where the cars get sold.

edit: whoops, I misread you - flat tax, not flow tax. A flat tax scheme would still put an inadequate load of taxes on poor-ish people. With a 20% tax, someone with 1M $ of yearly income has to pay 200.000 $ in taxes and takes home 800.000 $ while a poor person with 20.000 $ income pays 4.000 $ in taxes and takes home 16.000 $. The rich person most likely won't notice the 200.000 $ being gone, but the poor person will immediately notice it. It's not a question of gaming the system here, but of social fairness.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#184

Post by microtonal »

throwaway_f8ed wrote: post #177
microtonal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Europe consists of modern welfare states. This is the model that we, Europeans, chose democratically over the span of decades or even centuries. In a welfare state, people and companies that are better off pay (more) taxes to support welfare, education, infrastructure, etc. Apple doesn't get to decide for us what our collective moral values are. If they don't like them, they should stop doing business in Euro…

This comment comes off as extremely offensive. You are basically saying that you, European people, democratically and unilaterally chose that you can extort people at gunpoint to make better living for yourself, parasiting on other peoples work. I wouldn't exactly call these values "moral". Apple should just pull out from Europe.

This comment comes off as extremely offensive. You are basically saying that you, European people, democratically and unilaterally chose that you can extort people at gunpoint to make better living for yourself,

If you want to do business in a country, you have to live by the laws of the country. If a country's laws specify that a certain percentage of profit should be paid as taxes, it is like it is.

Some countries prefer free-for-all capitalism. Other countries prefer to have state-mandated universal health care, a decent amount of holidays, a certain income for unemployed, etc. Those facilities have to be funded somehow.

I wouldn't exactly call these values "moral".

Sure, for someone who believes in pure capitalism, it is not moral. For someone who believes in social democracy, it is. For a typical EU citizen (making a large generalization), US-style capitalism is immoral. Unfortunately, the US tries very hard to export their model to the rest of the world (which is of course in the interest of the US).

Apple should just pull out from Europe.

Even with the normal taxation tariffs (that smaller companies cannot dodge), Apple will make a large profit in Europe. So, that would be a large loss to them.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#185

Post by MarkMc »

downandout wrote: post #14

These people are protesting against the wrong entity. Apple followed the tax laws at the time, so they should protest against their government for creating loopholes that can and always will be exploited by those with the resources to do so. Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, which includes taking advantage of any and all available strategies to reduce their ta…

Actually, protesting against their own (French) government would also be the wrong entity. The right entity is the US government, because almost all of the profit on iPhones sold in France is created in the US. For the same reason that Foxconn makes only $8 profit on each iPhone [1], the sales operations of Apple in France would generate very low profit per phone if it was an independent company. This is because almost all the value-added activity (eg. hardware design, writing software, designing ads, designing Apple stores, WWDC) is done in California, not France.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/25/foxconn_getti...

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#186

Post by isoskeles »

Top19 wrote: post #101
humanrebar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really respect this kind of activism. I'd respect activism advocating for simplified, hard to game tax codes more. I don't think it's really sustainable for the public to get interminably worked up, protesting company after company in order to keep everyone honest. In general, the best solution to corruption is simpler, more transparent systems. Corruption thrives in complexity and arcana. Deals happen in back ro…

Wanted to comment that I think corporate shame is such a beautifully under-appreciated tool people should be leveraging more, and it absolutely is as much a pillar of the political process as the legislative branch. Bringing back a societal-enforced code of ethics punishable by humiliation and public shame with a defined path of atonement is what’s going to put all corporations back in line. It absolutely has dangers…

It sounds like you want mob justice but managed to avoid using those words.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#189

Post by innocentoldguy »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #164
innocentoldguy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to your link, Apple was forced to pay the taxes they owed. Isn’t that how tax laws and enforcement are supposed to work?

The comment I was replying to said "Apple is paying the taxes it is legally responsible to pay. End of story." My point is that it definitely wasn't the end of the story.

But it really is, isn’t it? Apple thought they paid their taxes and France disagreed. This happens all the time, even on personal levels.

Re: Shouting ‘pay your taxes,’ activists occupy Apple retail stores across France

#190

Post by innocentoldguy »

StephenMelon wrote: post #152
innocentoldguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn’t care less about downvotes. Most of the time, they are indicative of disagreement more than anything else, and I come here for discussion, not glad-handing people for meaningless votes. Furthermore, the issue of tax law/enforcement isn’t going to be solved by whining at Apple. If you don’t like the laws that offer legal loopholes for large corporations to lessen their tax burden, your lawmakers are the ones…

Actually, given that lawmakers are in effect captured by large corporations, and Apple are the largest of all, what they think about tax law actually really matters. Tim Cook has spoken out about cash repatriation several times and the debate seems to be about where the tax is paid. If a phone is sold in France, a corporation is making money from the French market, so given that that market has fixed infrastructure c…

France does receive tax on Apple’s business in the form of sales tax, VAT, property tax, corporate tax, etc., so I’m not sure what you’re insinuating here. Can you elaborate?
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