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

#171

Post by archagon » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

ogre_magi wrote: post #121

arrrg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be the most brilliant tax plan in the universe. The president wouldn’t be any less revolting because of that. I’m not sure why you are connecting these two ideas. It is true that the partisan extremism of everything leads to people irrationally hating everything someone does (or, as in this case, is loosely associated with), but that doesn’t mean the opposite. This does not and should not wash this revolti…

You are very virtuous and your political opponents are very gross.

Yep, everything is Totally Normal™ in American politics!

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

#172

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

guyzero wrote: post #116

downandout wrote: post #36

I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US. They of course give no credit to him in this press release, but the proof is in the pudding. Of the many heavy handed ideas and efforts made by the previous administration to convince Apple to do this, exactly 0…

The $1B Reno datacenter expansion was announced in May of 2017. So it has nothing to do with cash repatriation really. http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2017/05/10/breaking-apple-anno...

The stock market rally started on election day. Clearly it was not based on what Trump had done, but anticipated what Trump with a GOP Congress would do. The expectation of a large corporate tax cut was certainly there throughout 2017, and may very well have had a large influence on the Reno decision.

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

#173

Post by pg314 » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #36

I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US. They of course give no credit to him in this press release, but the proof is in the pudding. Of the many heavy handed ideas and efforts made by the previous administration to convince Apple to do this, exactly 0…

> to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US.

Where in the article does it state that they will invest the repatriated cash in the US? The only concrete number is the $38 billion tax payment upon repatriation, which is a direct result of the tax plan. If you read carefully they state nowhere how much of the repatriated cash will be invested instead of simply returned to shareholders. They just added up what they were already planning to invest anyway in the next 5 years. It might have increased slightly with the tax cuts, but not a whole lot. They weren't constrained by cash before, only by meaningful investment opportunities.

Keep an eye on their quarterly and yearly reports to get the real story. I expect a large chunk of the repatriated cash will be used to pay off the debt they took on to finance past dividends and share repurchases. The rest will be used for future share buybacks.

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

#174

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #129

downandout wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet nobody gave it to them until now, which resulted in trillions of dollars that should have been benefitting the US economy sitting unused in places like Ireland.

You do know that the money isn't literally sitting overseas right? It is invested (Apple would be the largest bond fund in the world [1] if they accepted outside money). So they'll sell the investments, pay a little tax and then probably do a massive buy back of their shares and a special dividend. A little switching around on paper, but certainly not a stimulus of any sort. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/article…

Of course there is no Apple cash hoard, it's all invested. The difference is it being invested in foreign countries, or invested in America.

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

#175

Post by jayd16 » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #93

FigmentEngine wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://thinkprogress.org/walmart-fires-thousands-after-bonu...

That's intentionally context dropping by Think Progress. Walmart's Sam's Club business is not doing well in competition with Costco. It hasn't been doing very well for years now. You'll notice the Think Progress article avoids any discussion of the context of the Sam's Club business from which the workers were fired. Here's the hint: Sam's Club closed 63 locations. Do you think they did that to save money on the work…

Just shows how supply side economics doesn't save jobs.

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

#176

Post by makomk » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

IBM wrote: post #59

downandout wrote: post #36

I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US. They of course give no credit to him in this press release, but the proof is in the pudding. Of the many heavy handed ideas and efforts made by the previous administration to convince Apple to do this, exactly 0…

Nobody had to convince Apple or any other company to do anything. The repatriation is deemed, i.e no company has a choice in it. And while you may believe it was "proposed" by Trump, it has actually been in the works for years by both parties in Congress and by Obama [1]. They could just never pass a bill (because what else did you expect with Obama in the WH and Republicans in control of Congress) because Democrats…

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 Trump and the Republicans, it's because their opponents fought hard to make that association.

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

#177

Post by jdoliner » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #35

jdoliner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations have a legal obligation to their shareholders to maximize their profits. If they did something as negligent as paying taxes they didn't have to pay, and that none of their competitors pay, they'd be opening themselves up to a lawsuit from shareholders. Laws are weird.

Factually, corporations do not have a legal obligation to their shareholders to maximize their profits. That's a myth and a very absurd one at that. If it were true, Salesforce couldn't operate its various corporate charity programs as one example. You could have researched that one pretty easily: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co... https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fidu…

I don't really see the difference between having a legal obligation to act in your shareholders best interests and an obligation to maximize profits. Given that profit is most shareholders only interest in owning the stock. Now that does mean that companies should maximize long term profit, perhaps at the cost of short term profit. But I fail to see how paying taxes you don't have to is ever in the best interests of their shareholders.

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

#178

Post by lbrdn » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

axau wrote: post #157

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…

That makes no sense. Then the government would get nothing, plus give up future leverage, so obviously it will not do that. Comparing what happened to having no tax is a straw man. What happened here is that the government finally set a rate that is agreeable to both parties, which is of course in its interest and long overdue.

How is it a straw man? Maybe it's the right way to go. I honestly don't know.

My point is that encouraging a behavior where the country sets a rate, then many celebrate the reduction because they get a short term gain, risks leading the US farther down a path that neglects its obligations.

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

#179

Post by colemannugent » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

lbotos wrote: post #122

ovao wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are nothing more than PR moves. They’re certainly good for PR, and perhaps that’s the primary intention, but employees are benefitting from it.

Right, but imagine if instead, they gave them a raise instead of a one time bonus? That is how you actually benefit workers.

Walmart employs about 2.3 million people. At $1000 per employee that's $2,300,000,000 going back into the economy.

Now, if Walmart gave everyone who worked there a $1 raise. With about 1.5 million full-time employees working around 1700 hours per year (US average 2016) that would mean about $2,550,000,000. So that bonus is almost equivalent to a temporary raise in terms of benefits.

That is just for full-time employees. A blanket $1 raise would probably come out to about $4,000,000,000 each year that Walmart may not have if the tax cuts are removed by the next administration, which they very well could be.

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

#180

Post by banku_brougham » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #36

I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US. They of course give no credit to him in this press release, but the proof is in the pudding. Of the many heavy handed ideas and efforts made by the previous administration to convince Apple to do this, exactly 0…

Its not fascinating. The contents of the tax plan were only known to corporate CFOs during the week of the vote, there hasn’t been time for due diligence since then to change direction of a top 10000 US company.

Any corporate announcement you read in january has been under corporate review at least since end Q3 2017.