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

#311

Post by sjsbsh » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

onezerozeroone wrote: post #213

downandout wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We currently get $0 in tax revenue from the cash Apple is hoarding overseas. This tax “holiday” (a term I dislike because it incorrectly implies that no tax is being paid on the repatriation, when it is simply a reduced rate) is resulting in $38 billion that we would not have otherwise received. $38,000,000,000 > $0

If you or I decided we just didn't like the tax rate that applied to us and didn't pay our taxes for decades at a time on income we made overseas, what do you think would happen? Corporations are treated as people only when it's convenient. You and I don't have high-powered lawyers, lobbyists, loopholes, offshore accounts, subsidiaries, etc to hide behind. This is an insult to every U.S. citizen...Apple wouldn't exis…

You can do the same by buying stocks and not paying taxes on earnings (including dividend) until you sell.

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

#312

Post by miketery » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

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…

> That means that there won't be any more hordes of overseas profits. And means the end of those tax inversions or corporate inversions you have been hearing about. [1]

This won't stop companies selling their IP to overseas shells and then paying royalties.

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

#313

Post by WatermelonApe » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

infocollector wrote: post #289

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...

Can this be challenged in a court? Let them pay 15% and then fine them with another 25% for trying to dodge?

What are they dodging? They're paying a reasonable tax rate of 23%, as opposed to never repatriating the profits and paying 0%. The US govt gave them a chance to clean the slate at a reasonable rate and they took it.

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

#314

Post by jitix » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #308

jitix wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah the latter sucks because as a resident I can’t even start a business here. I have to jump through hooves like Estonia’s e-residency program to just publish an app.

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

#315

Post by jjoonathan » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:13 AM UTC

autokad wrote: post #286

croon wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am interested in seeing where this goes. if we do see wage growth from it, it provides evidence to a lot of questions about how the cost of healthcare was squeezing out our wages. if it doesnt, then a lot of complaints about corporations will have a lot more evidence. Spoiler alert: It's a remake. Trickle-down doesn't work. Investing significant money in businesses doesn't create more work. Increasing demand crea…

from what I am told, my taxes were lowered - thus you would be factually wrong. but I'll wait and see if that is true when I fill out my taxes. beyond that, I have seen me and many others see immediate returns. your position is already starting from a hole, but I am a wait and see kind of person. I hope it works out, you should too, unless you are one of those people who just want to see the world burn types.

> from what I am told, my taxes were lowered

Are you in the bracket of a typical American taxpayer or the bracket of a typical HN-er?

> I am a wait and see kind of person.

We've been slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy since the Reagan era under the trickle down philosophy, but we're still waiting for that money to actually trickle down: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

If 50 years isn't a long enough experiment for you, what is?

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

#316

Post by prostoalex » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #276

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…

That doesn’t make any sense though. Why would Apple just create millions of jobs that they don’t require? This is the key mistake people make when they say that tax cuts will create jobs, or minimum wages will cost employment. Companies try to be efficient, and therefore don’t create jobs they don’t need, and don’t get rid of jobs they do need if wages go up. That’s why there is pretty much zero statistical correlati…

Let’s not forget that US-based competitors are getting the very same tax cut, while foreign-based competitors likely had more favorable tax environment to boot. Creating the jobs one doesn’t need by one player increases that player’s costs and affects margins long-term, meanwhile competitors who did nothing can simply lower their prices.

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

#317

Post by SapphireSun » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

jriot wrote: post #273

chrischen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A headline that will never see the light of day.

Mainly because it's hard to suppress laughter if you think about it at all beyond a surface level. See discussion in another thread. I don't want to repeat myself.

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

#318

Post by toyg » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #292

jlmorton wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what say what you will about the current administration, they managed to get something done that even some of the most tax-hungry politicians in the nation previously failed to do. This is not terribly unique. We had a very similar (slightly more generous) repatriation tax holiday during the Bush Administration, in 2004.

It's been 14 years, which included 8 years of tax-hungry Democratic rule. So it is at least somewhat unique.

Lol, only US Republicans can see US Democrats as "tax hungry". Both the Clinton and Obama administrations were extremely business-friendly.

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

#319

Post by telchar » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:26 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.

There's no enabling here in the usual sense of the word, they just made it cheaper. It'd be like a headline "copious butter enables little Tommy to eat vegetables". Apple could have repatriated that money at any time, and likely would have if they didn't know that they could hold out for a feckless Republican administration to give them a big tax holiday. Pretending otherwise is a fiction that supports repeated corporate tax rate reductions and encourages companies like Apple to make use of elaborate tax avoidance schemes.

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

#320

Post by revelation » Thu, Jan 18, 2018, 1:27 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.

But of course Apple isn't paying no German taxes. They didn't pay taxes on any of this overseas money, and they had the gall to ask for an "repatriation holiday" so they could pay overall zero taxes on that huge heap of money.

Now they are paying the US gov. Unless they can keep coming up with more Irish tax avoidance schemes, going forward they will probably also have to pay in Europe.