Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes • Hacker News Board

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#101

Post by tamana » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #75

Eduard wrote: post #43

Question towards Steve Jobs on a Cupertino City Council Meeting in 2011: "[How do] city residents benefit from [Apple's new campus]?" Jobs: "Well, as you know, we're the largest taxpayer in Cupertino. So we'd like to continue to stay here and pay taxes. [...]. Because if we can't, then we have to go somehwere like Mountain View [and] the largest tax base will go away. This wouldn't be good for Cupertino." https://you…

Can you blame him? There's nothing sleazier than municipal governments, at least once they reach a certain size. They all see the business class as a gravy train to ride instead of finding ways to do a better job with the already large budgets they have. Chicago doesn't have a Jobs to control it, so its endless tax raises to pay for sweetheart public union pension deals and other backroom corruption. I think the inte…

Size has nothing to do with it. Plenty of small sleazy munis too

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#102

Post by tamana » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #99

Regardless of the politics, Apple and Google and all the other Peninsula companies should be willing to help fund public transit because it is directly affecting their ability to recruit employees.

They are. The people who control the munis don't want to bother building transit.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#103

Post by DannyBee » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

So, uh, the city is already highly dependent on one payer, and the solution proposed is to increase the proportion that payer pays?

I guess i never understand why people think the solution to something having too much influence due to money is to become more dependent on their money. I can see no magic way to accomplish this without an increase in influence from that payer, and to think you can seems ... pretty pie-in-the-sky.

The real solution is to diversify where your money comes from, at pretty much any cost.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#104

Post by tamana » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

djschnei wrote: post #48

martinald wrote: post #15

In the UK we have the concept of "Section 106" payments which allow a development through planning by the developer paying the local government some amount of money to redress the cost of dealing with congestion, public relam, affordable housing, etc. For large skyscraper developments in London, this can be many many millions of pounds. Does something similar exist in CA?

Wow... outstanding haha. So in bringing more business to an area, they need to pay twice? At what point do people actually own the land they own?

Never. Land is partly common property.

Real estate is taxed ongoing because the Earth has finite land.

Google "Land Value Tax"

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#105

Post by PavlovsCat » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #75

Eduard wrote: post #43

Question towards Steve Jobs on a Cupertino City Council Meeting in 2011: "[How do] city residents benefit from [Apple's new campus]?" Jobs: "Well, as you know, we're the largest taxpayer in Cupertino. So we'd like to continue to stay here and pay taxes. [...]. Because if we can't, then we have to go somehwere like Mountain View [and] the largest tax base will go away. This wouldn't be good for Cupertino." https://you…

Can you blame him? There's nothing sleazier than municipal governments, at least once they reach a certain size. They all see the business class as a gravy train to ride instead of finding ways to do a better job with the already large budgets they have. Chicago doesn't have a Jobs to control it, so its endless tax raises to pay for sweetheart public union pension deals and other backroom corruption. I think the inte…

While we're talking generalities, here's something more serious.

> What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.

-- Noam Chomsky

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#106

Post by gumby » Thu, May 05, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

slantaclaus wrote: post #85

Lazare wrote: post #27

I can't believe Apple is wilfully not paying property taxes on their headquarters! That's quite illegal, and I'm sure... ...oh, they are paying their property taxes? I see. So which taxes, precisely, are they not paying the Cupertino government? Oh, there aren't any taxes, but you sort of wish someone with the authority to do so would pass a law making new taxes, but they won't, so you're mad at...Apple? 'k.

They're called impact fees, and the dumb shmuck should have created laws to levy them beforehand

He tried and failed, which makes his position even more absurd, regardless of what you think of the merits of his case.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#107

Post by jsprogrammer » Thu, May 05, 2016, 5:01 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #103

So, uh, the city is already highly dependent on one payer, and the solution proposed is to increase the proportion that payer pays ? I guess i never understand why people think the solution to something having too much influence due to money is to become more dependent on their money. I can see no magic way to accomplish this without an increase in influence from that payer, and to think you can seems ... pretty pie-…

By "one payer" you mean the thousands of people on hundreds of acres in Cupertino?

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#108

Post by stephencanon » Thu, May 05, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

jamespitts wrote: post #59

Perfect article while the Life and Death of Cities is in mind. Apple could be a better citizen, and contribute a lot more than money to the city around it. If the company fully subscribes to shareholder theory, they will contribute only what the law requires. But Apple seems to stand for higher things such as design excellence and human dignity. The company can contribute to making Cupertino a functional and wonderfu…

> The company can contribute to making Cupertino a functional and wonderful "city". It is neither of those things now with its car-centric configuration and lack of enough housing construction.

The car-centric configuration is what most of the current residents want (if they wanted something else, they would choose to live somewhere else). Since they control a majority voting block in city politics, there's very little that Apple can do to change that; significant changes to the status quo will be blocked by the city residents.

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#109

Post by nxzero » Thu, May 05, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

Unable to find a source, but I thought Cupertino City Council approved this; if true, the Mayor blaming Apple for the City Council's actions seems a bit twisted.

Is anyone know if what if any role the Cupertino City Council played in the situation and provided a source to back this up?

Re: Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

#110

Post by tptacek » Thu, May 05, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

lewis500 wrote: post #73

This reporter is credulous, because the Guardian is just awful. "Barry Chang barely made it into the lobby when Apple’s security team surrounded and escorted him off the property. “They said ‘you cannot come in, you’re not invited’. After that I left and have not gone back,” said an exasperated Chang." Uh huh. Yeah I bet it happened just like that. What buffoon of a reporter prints a politician's self-serving and inc…

Nit: Hillary Clinton is apparently an authentic fiend for hot sauce; she has a giant collection of them, takes it with her everywhere, and puts it on everything, including foods where it's kind of gross to eat with hot sauce.