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

reuters.com

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

#371

Post by discoursism »

c3534l wrote: post #366
breatheoften wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so beyond the pale as to be far beyond the realm of logical discussion. If I have pooled my 'right of personhoop' contributions into a corporate asset base and thus absolved myself of liability laws regarding the disposition of this asset base -- what basis do I have to have to claim 'my' personhood rights over how this asset base is distributed to political campaigns? If what you say is _actually_ true then…

I have no problem limiting campaign contributions and certain political activities. The constitution does, though. The law generally likes to treat corporations as separate from their owners, but no such notion exists in the constitution. And if it comes to a question of constitutionality, then it doesn't matter that our laws limit the financial liability of a stockholder to his or her contribution because that's not…

The constitution as interpreted by five out of nine sitting judges at the time the question was last ruled on. It's reasonable to think the constitution says otherwise, although you are correct as to the law of the land at the moment.

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

#372

Post by c3534l »

discoursism wrote: post #371
c3534l wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem limiting campaign contributions and certain political activities. The constitution does, though. The law generally likes to treat corporations as separate from their owners, but no such notion exists in the constitution. And if it comes to a question of constitutionality, then it doesn't matter that our laws limit the financial liability of a stockholder to his or her contribution because that's not…

The constitution as interpreted by five out of nine sitting judges at the time the question was last ruled on. It's reasonable to think the constitution says otherwise, although you are correct as to the law of the land at the moment.

True enough.

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

#373

Post by discoursism »

jonny_eh wrote: post #34
sigstoat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary... do you pay your state government the sales tax you owe it for all of your online purchases?

That would take more work to pay more taxes. Apple did work (setting up a subsidiary) to avoid paying taxes.

I set up my 401k. That was work. I've also done the mega-backdoor Roth IRA last year, and will do it again this year. Am I a bad man?

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

#374

Post by spoiledtechie »

IBM wrote: post #185
makomk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to the bill passing, pretty much every single Democrat-leaning publication tried to spin it as an evil Trump/Republican plot to give Apple billions of taxpayer money, with the figure calculated based on the difference between what they'd pay if they repatriated all those funds at the full tax rate (which wasn't ever going to happen) and the amount they'd pay under the bill. If people associate this bill with Tr…

They fought this bill hard because the tax proceeds are being given away to corporations with a massive reduction in the corporate rate (along with other giveaways that benefit the wealthy such as lowering personal income taxes and raising the threshold for the estate tax), in direct contravention to their policy goals. Had the Republicans chosen not to use this opportunity to go for broke while they're in control of…

Its called job creation. Companies who benefit create jobs...

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

#375

Post by rdtsc »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138
rdtsc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard about have been laughable so far Having been poor, then living on $750/month in US for many years, a $1000 bonus is not life changing but also not laughable. The companies certainly didn't have to give those and could have pocketed all of it. > large lay offs in two cases (Walmart and Comcast). Are those because of the tax incentives?

You only get the full $1000 if you worked for Walmart full time for 20 years. It’s not like you would still get much if you were a typical Walmart employee.

Walmart is not the only company which gave bonuses. AT&T did the same. Apple gave employees $2500. Overall that is a quite a bit of people who got something they probably would not have gotten otherwise. Yeah, it would be nice to have free healthcare, basic income other things. But to someone making minimum age $1000 is a nice holiday gift. Why not be happy for them?

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

#376

Post by spoiledtechie »

cromwellian wrote: post #205

How realistic is it that a $5 billion fund can move a non-trivial amount of iPhone manufacturing to the US? Most of the BOM supply chain is in Asia, and assembly at FoxConn I heard amounts to 3% of the cost. It seems like Apple would have to build mostly automated assembly in the US or suffer severe margin reduction, and they'd suffer turnaround issues with the crucial components being still sourced in China. However…

If its stock buy backs, then why is Apple creating jobs and a new campus with the capital?

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

#377

Post by spoiledtechie »

threeseed wrote: post #153
zghst wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was pretty much the only finalist candidate that proposed cutting taxes, and not just by a bit, Trump by his nature wanted the greatest change

This is factually baseless nonsense. Jeb Bush: https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-governor-jeb-... Marco Rubio: https://taxfoundation.org/presidential-hopeful-marco-rubio-a... You can compare all candidate plans here: https://taxfoundation.org/comparing-2016-presidential-tax-re... In fact it was Ben Carson who proposed cutting the tax rates the most (corporate tax rate -> 14.9%).

I think you have your history wrong. Herman Cain started it...

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

#378

Post by discoursism »

c3534l wrote: post #372
discoursism wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The constitution as interpreted by five out of nine sitting judges at the time the question was last ruled on. It's reasonable to think the constitution says otherwise, although you are correct as to the law of the land at the moment.

True enough.

And I also think it's fair for you to use the shorthand, "The constitution says ..." as a stand-in for this. But there seem to be some people in the thread who are not too familiar with the American legal system, and I don't want those folks to be confused into thinking the document actually says anything directly about corporate person-hood and free speech. Not trying to put you on the defense or anything.

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

#379

Post by philwelch »

pishpash wrote: post #368
philwelch wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular people own wealth in the form of corporations, too. Half of all Americans own stocks. Public and private sector pension funds own large amounts of stock. University endowments include stock investments and private equity. Sovereign wealth funds, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, own large amounts of stock. If we want to tax the rich, let's tax the rich. Let's not tax straw men that intermediate wealth for ev…

Half (46% in 2013) of all Americans owned some financial wealth, that's already counting indirect investments -- I believe this number came from a study by Ed Wolff. In the same year (2013), the bottom 80% together owned about 5% of the financial wealth in the US, under the same definition counting indirect investments (80%-99% owned about 50%, 99%-100% owned about 45%). So no, "everyone" does not benefit in the same…

That’s kind of like saying that because I have a house on a tiny plot of land and my rich neighbor owns half the land in town, that property taxes don’t affect me. It doesn’t really follow.

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

#380

Post by sjg007 »

rdtsc wrote: post #370
sjg007 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point is that earned income should not have to be repatriated to be taxed. If I as a citizen have a bank account in Switzerland that accepts my foreign income then I pay tax on that money in the year it was earned. The exact same rules should apply. Just because the bank account is outside of the US should not make a difference.

> The whole point is that earned income should not have to be repatriated to be taxed. Agree. They used the double Irish paying basically no income tax there. Then were trying to move to Jersey (the island). This isn't new though and other companies were doing it. Is there any realistic short term hope that we'll finally close all the loopholes and the Apples and Googles of this country will start paying their fair s…

My guess is that the path outside of the legislature doing anything is through the courts. Since corporations are citizens there must be some kind of constitutional law since human citizens don’t get the same benefit.
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