Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#301

Post by namelost » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 12:57 AM UTC

jdoliner wrote: post #226

FireBeyond wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairly simply, many investors see corporate longevity, while paying smaller, more reliable dividends as their best interest. Doing so could easily be orthogonal to "maximizing profits".

Corporate longevity is only in their interests because it maximizes long term profits.

Shareholders care about more than profits. Just ask one!

Many shareholders care about stability, There is the whole distinction between "growth" stocks and "income" stocks. Some investors prefer low-growth companies that pay big dividends, other investors prefer just the opposite.

Some investors care about environmental issues, or social issues, or religious issues. e.g. the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund divests from companies that don't meet its ethical objectives, and is often a significant investor.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#302

Post by SapphireSun » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 12:57 AM UTC

civilian wrote: post #297

SapphireSun wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of their profits is what the socialist would respond. :) They produce nothing without the working class. Managers can earn a modest salary.

It's important to have incentives to reward success. How would a business even grow if it could never keep profits? The working class does benefit from Apple, in the form of high-quality technology that even they can purchase.

There are a variety of alternative arrangements that have been proposed. Economic democracy is one of them (that is, the workers control the company via elections, which will influence their pay).

The workers benefit somewhat from Apple, yes, in the form of a consumer gadget. I will grant Apple some utility, it did find a way to fuse existing science and technology in an interesting way to produce a very nice pocket computer.

However, this has had many effects, some good (access to information and maps), some bad (dissolution of privacy, addictive interfaces, the creation of "apps" at the expense of the open internet). Apple then uses this commodity to vacuum up dollars from consumers in excess of what it cost to produce... and do nothing with them other than allow executives and securities holders to slake their desire to accumulate. It's an addiction in itself.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#303

Post by maximumkek » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 12:59 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #246

NelsonMinar wrote: post #239

Alternate headline: "Apple dodges $49B in taxes by waiting for a tax holiday". They reduced their rate on $250B of earnings from 35% to 15.5% by waiting for a new tax policy. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/apple-plans-to-p...

Alternate headline: Trump policies enable Apple to re-invest in US jobs and economy.

I think that headline would be classified as bigotted..?

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#304

Post by rlanday » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

dibujante wrote: post #247

lbrdn wrote: post #126

Of course lowering taxes would encourage companies to repatriate large overseas cash hoards, but if that's the only goal, why have a tax at all? As a country the US has obligations to its current citizens and its future citizens and those obligations cost money. If we overly celebrate these windfalls every time the tax rate is lowered, we might not realize that what we owe the citizen is being forgot and allowed to e…

Some people make the (good? I don't know) argument that corporate taxes are distortionary anyways, and shuffling that tax burden over to income has the same effect with fewer side effects.

I think people like corporate taxes because people only have a vague idea of where the incidence actually falls. Clearly, at the end of the day, corporate taxes take money out of the pockets of business owners/shareholders, employees, and customers in some proportion, but no one's really sure what it is. Taxes that you're obviously paying are unpopular, whereas taxes it feels like "someone else" is paying are less unpopular.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#305

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

SapphireSun wrote: post #235

This is a diversion tactic. They're grabbing 252.3B and spending less than a fifth of it. Let's imagine a different world. 200B, divided by 50k + 1.5x overhead (75k) could create about 2.6M decent jobs for one year (or 1.3M for two years etc). 2.6M jobs is equal to 0.8% of the total US population. The total labor force size is about 160M (~1/2 the total population) and the U6 measure of unemployment is about 8%. A he…

[deleted]

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#306

Post by IBM » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:05 AM UTC

anilshanbhag wrote: post #265

benjaminl wrote: post #253

This discussion is missing context. The whole reason that Apple has to pay taxes on foreign income is because unlike almost every other developed nation the US has a worldwide tax system. Almost every other nation has a territorial tax system. The rest of the world with their territorial system taxes income earned within that country, the US rather taxes income worldwide, regardless of where it is earned. For example…

=> But if a US company earns income in Germany it pays both German taxes and US taxes. This is not portrayed accurately. If you pay German taxes, you claim exception for that amount. So if you pay more taxes than the rate in US, you owe no tax for that income in US. If the rate is less in the country than in US, you pay the difference.

Yes you get a credit for the foreign taxes paid, but even still it's absurdly punitive for being an American corporation.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#307

Post by r0fl » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

krebby wrote: post #12

crusso wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they finally pay for part of what they owe You only owe the taxes that the law compels you to pay. There's no obligation whatsoever to pay a dime more. Do you personally look to pay the maximum amount of taxes that you could possibly justify through various readings of the tax code? Because I guarantee that your tax software or your tax accountant are not "taking advantage" of opportunities for you to pay more unless…

No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary in Ireland that owns my intellectual property and pays me dividends for my freelance work. To pretend that they didn't go above and beyond to avoid paying taxes is lunacy.

This is probably because your business is too small. I’d youbwere making 10s or 100s of millions of dollars in annual profits you would have a pretend subsidiary by now.

Apple has done nothing illegal. If you don’t like it, you can complain about the tax laws, that’s what is bothering you.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#308

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

jitix wrote: post #291

benjaminl wrote: post #253

This discussion is missing context. The whole reason that Apple has to pay taxes on foreign income is because unlike almost every other developed nation the US has a worldwide tax system. Almost every other nation has a territorial tax system. The rest of the world with their territorial system taxes income earned within that country, the US rather taxes income worldwide, regardless of where it is earned. For example…

The worldwide tax law sucks even more for an individual. And it makes absolutely no sense when you’re not even a citizen!

If you are not a citizen, you can at least avoid it if you are not staying in the US, as you'd be a non-resident for tax purposes.

But if you are a non-citizen who is a resident for tax purposes, then yeah you are out of luck.

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#309

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

SapphireSun wrote: post #295

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do pay taxes elsewhere. They are subject to each country's tax laws that they make income in. You are probably referring to the Irish/EU arrangement, but that has little bearing in Japan or China or wherever else China makes money.

Your reference to the double Irish arrangement completely undercuts your point. You admit that they aren't paying substantial taxes in a huge market they participate in. With respect to Japan and China, a multinational company, an effectively stateless entity (or possibly a state unto itself) can simply move to the most profitable country, thus forcing countries to compete for its tax dollars. Thus, the multinational…

[deleted]

Re: Apple plans new U.S. campus, to pay $38B in foreign cash taxes

#310

Post by SapphireSun » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

rlanday wrote: post #300

SapphireSun wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reference to the double Irish arrangement completely undercuts your point. You admit that they aren't paying substantial taxes in a huge market they participate in. With respect to Japan and China, a multinational company, an effectively stateless entity (or possibly a state unto itself) can simply move to the most profitable country, thus forcing countries to compete for its tax dollars. Thus, the multinational…

Ah, this is exactly the same reason no corporation can stay in business! (Since consumers can just buy from the one that has the lowest prices) For this reason, we should encourage corporations to form cartels to avoid getting taken advantage of by disloyal consumers.

Ok, last one. :) You've really just made a mockery of the ideology of competition haven't you? In fact, that is what corporations do. There's an awful lot of highly concentrated market power lying around for exactly that reason.