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

reuters.com

431–440 of 537 posts

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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, they paid taxes in Germany, France, etc. it’s reported in their financial statements. They’ve already paid 8 or 9% foreign income taxes on their foreign earnings.

Really?

Because those are EU countries and Apple has a tax deal with Ireland in the EU.

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

#432

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…

> For example, if a British company earns income in Germany, its pays German taxes on its German income.

Or, like Apple have a double Irish with a Dutch sandwich.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-takes-ire...

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

#433

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…

No Americans want to make iPhones, those are crappy jobs. We want more engineering jobs.

not everyone is an engineer either

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

#434

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…

Note that US citizens living abroad are still subject to US's worldwide tax. The tax bill only moved corporations from worldwide to territorial tax.

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

#435

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…

Does that transition to a territorial system apply only to corporations or do individuals count too? American expats are among the few in the world who have to pay taxes to the mothership no matter how long they live abroad.

US citizens living abroad are still subject to the worldwide tax. The Republican's tax bill only affected corporations.

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

#436

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…

> For example, if a British company earns income in Germany, its pays German taxes on its German income.

This isn’t entirely accurate (heh, taxes are complicated). The company would most likely pay VAT/sales tax in Germany, but would pay corporate/income tax in the U.K. If your customer is a VAT registered business you would usually exclude the VAT, unless they are based in the same jurisdiction as you (it doesn’t matter where the item is going).

Up until 2015 this wasn’t the case for digital goods as VAT was charged at the ‘place of supply’ (where the company was based), but it is now accounted for where your customer is located. This is what caused the VAT MOSS kerfuffle, as you now need to account for 28 sets of tax rules depending on where your customer is located.

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

#437
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is #fakenews. Please don't; it breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments. Your comment would be fine without the first, and perhaps also the last, sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If anybody posted an article from Fox News here on HN, how quickly would that be flagged and commented on? Dang as a moderator you really should be be unbiased right?

Pretty sure there has been the occasional solid submission from Fox urls here over the years. I'm on my phone so can't easily check.

Crappy articles and solid articles don't map to entire sites very easily. Even highly politicized sites or low grade tabloids sometimes produce the kind of pieces we want here. We moderate HN for article quality, not website or publication quality.

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

#438

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…

Thanks for this. Sounds win-win to me.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father, who is quite wise and right about many things, is very fond of stating that corporation's don't pay taxes - they just pass them on to other people. He owned a local redi-mix company until he retired, and they routinely adjusted wages and prices in response to local, state, and federal tax changes. It's a fact of life that the money corporations pay comes from somewhere, whether it's on the 'in' side or the…

One of those "out" sides of the balance sheet is the owners of the corporation. That's generally who people think of when they think of who "pays" corporate tax. Especially for taxes on profits, which go 100% to the owners.

I agree that that’s what people seem to think. But if the corporate taxes get too high, wouldn’t you think that at some point, business owners start saying “screw it, I want to be a W-2 worker,” which obviously would put downward pressure on employee wages? Conversely, now that the tax reform bill created all these tax advantages for passthrough income, isn’t it obvious more people are going to be starting businesses and trying to structure their income as business income?

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

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Courts have ruled in favor of the mega-backdoor Roth IRA as a legitimate intended use of the tax code.
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