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

#181

Post by leggomylibro » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #9

muninn_ wrote: post #2

Would like to see more investment in manufacturing here in the United States. Apple has to recognize that unstable relations between the United States, the EU, and China (along with South Korea and others)could leave them in a precarious position with their physical manufacturing capabilities. If China says, give us U.S. user data, or give us the capability to build your new 3D camera or we shut your facilities down,…

It would need a lot of investment. You need glass makers, metal shops, semiconductor shops all close together to emulate what is there in China right now. I don't know if its really possible in the US.

You'd need a sort of 'motor city' for electronics. Something like what Detroit was for cars, or like what Shenzhen is now.

I'm surprised that no stateside port cities have tried to encourage that sort of thing; there are plenty of negative externalities, but I would still LEAP to move to such an initiative.

It's like...I want to create something that could make a difference for people, but all that I see in our current tech cities is faux do-goodiness, iniquity, and seething resentment. It's a bunch of people saying that they want to save the world while reaching into the pockets of people who can't afford it, and it hurts to be unfailingly lumped into that sort of behavior.

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

#182

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #125

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…

> I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley Not quite. The proposal has been on the table for years. The difference has been how to use the proceeds from repatriation. Republicans wanted lower corporate taxes. Democrats wanted something else. This wasn't new, it wasn't unique, and it wasn't Trump. Believing this was a plan proposed by Trump ignores history and facts.…

The buck stops with the President. If the GOP Congress won't work with the President, it's the President's job to find a way to get enough of them on board. LBJ was a master at getting "impossible" legislation through Congress, so I don't believe it was impossible for Obama. I suspect this is where his inexperience in politics showed.

An example of this was outlined on Frontline a few years back. Obama crafted a bill, and included a number of items the GOP said they wanted. He then presented it to the GOP, and was surprised when the GOP soundly rejected it. This is a failure of Sales 101, in that it was set up so Obama would get the credit. Of course the GOP rejected it. A craftier technique is to invite the GOP to write those sections of the bill themselves, and give the GOP the credit. Same bill, but totally different approach.

Again, the buck stops with the President.

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

#183

Post by larkost » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #167

rambleraptor wrote: post #149

I feel like this potentially buried the lede. Apple is planning on opening up a new campus in the USA. I feel like Amazon's HQ2 search is going to open the floodgates for tech companies asking for public incentives. Tech companies in the Bay Area have been creating tens of thousands of jobs for years without asking for much publicly. Expect that to change now.

Or maybe it will open the floodgates for tech companies to escape high costs of SV/California/West Coast. It is a hedging against increasingly expensive work force.

According to the article the new campus would be for support. Most of that in the U.S. is currently part of the Apple Texas campus. So this would not really alter much in Silicon Valley.

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

#184

Post by makomk » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:22 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #159

mudil wrote: post #4

"Apple Plans to Pay $38 Billion in Repatriation Taxes. " Imagine headline like this under Obama, how much praise he would get.

During the Obama years, economy went from 10% unemployment to 4%, yet all I heard from the conservative press on how bad things are.

Remember those articles after the election about how researchers found that pretty much all of the net jobs created since 2005 were temporary, contract work, gig economy or other such insecure short-term non-traditional employment? For instance, https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created...

Think carefully about what that means for the Obama years, and what it says about all the people who insisted those headline unemployment figures were iron-clad, indisputable proof that things were getting better and that anyone who claimed otherwise was simply lying.

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

#185

Post by IBM » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #176

IBM wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 Congress and the White House, they'd have Democratic support.

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

#186

Post by axau » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

lbrdn wrote: post #178

axau wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the US is not going “down a path that neglects its obligations”. In fact quite the opposite since it just got a massive tax revenue increase. So comparing it to a situation where the US decided to just stop levying tax doesn’t make sense.

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

#187

Post by pdeuchler » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #75

magicalist wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why is that fascinating? It's the tax holiday the tech megacorps have been asking for since the last one in 2004.

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.

Except those trillions of dollars were already benefiting the US economy by acting as collateral for huge loans and investments taken out by Apple stateside. Even with the deemed repatriation the money will most likely still sit in Irish bank accounts, and in certain cases escrow and PE funds, as it makes no sense to spend the time and effort to wire the money over to a US bank since taxes were already paid on it and renegotiating the banking deals alone would probably be more money than it's worth.

In general, from reading a lot of your comments, you seem to act like an authority on this issue when most of your statements sound like a freshman who just finished his macro midterm. If you actually read the lobbying documents and testimony from many corporations, this deemed repatriation wasn't at the top of their lists, and in many cases was completely unwanted. Even further, the republicans actually ended up with a much higher tax rate than what was originally agreed, 15/8 vs 10/7. Of course, this was offset by long term corporate tax decreases but many large multinationals vigorously advocated for no repatriation and just a tax change, or at the least a very soft repatriation holiday and absolutely no deemed repatriation.

Fortunately, due to things like "balanced budgets" and "deficits", the Republican caucus was quite literally forced to enact a "deemed repatriation" on offshore funds to make the corporate tax changes viable in the least. "Deemed" as in mandatory, which you so incorrectly refuted above in a different comment, because again, without it the corporate tax changes would have made the government unable to follow up on current monetary obligations. Some would, justifiably, call such a lenient deemed repatriation analogous to a soft holiday, but the overall point is that corporations actually took a small loss on this facet of the tax bill to gain a huge win in other parts.

The whole fight over repatriation was mostly a sleight of hand trick to captivate the public while making changes that actually matter to the more permanent corporate tax code. After all, Apple even stated a couple years ago they were using the money sitting in Ireland to help finance their upcoming (now finished) campus. Where the money is matters very little compared to where it's spent since dollars are fungible.

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

#188

Post by ericabiz » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

rambleraptor wrote: post #149

I feel like this potentially buried the lede. Apple is planning on opening up a new campus in the USA. I feel like Amazon's HQ2 search is going to open the floodgates for tech companies asking for public incentives. Tech companies in the Bay Area have been creating tens of thousands of jobs for years without asking for much publicly. Expect that to change now.

Strange that they would announce this now, after having already built a huge campus in Austin: http://fortune.com/2016/09/01/apple-austin-campus/

Austin is where many of their support workers are now, as well as engineers. Apple's main Cupertino campus is 2.8 million sq.ft., but the Austin campus is also huge at 1.1 million sq.ft. for the main set of buildings and another 216K for a smaller campus in southwest Austin.

So is this announcement for a third campus, or another expansion in Austin? I guess time--and incentives--will tell.

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

#189

Post by rlanday » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

larkost wrote: post #183

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it will open the floodgates for tech companies to escape high costs of SV/California/West Coast. It is a hedging against increasingly expensive work force.

According to the article the new campus would be for support. Most of that in the U.S. is currently part of the Apple Texas campus. So this would not really alter much in Silicon Valley.

> The company plans to establish an Apple campus in a new location, which will initially house technical support for customers.

Key word being "initially."

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

#190

Post by mozumder » Wed, Jan 17, 2018, 9:31 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…

This has nothing to do with the tax plan. It's a $5 billion additional investment in US operations over 5 years, most likely due to competitive pressures and regular business growth. If you want to thank anyone, thank Google/Amazon/Microsoft for forcing Apple to do this.

That $5 billion over 5 years is nothing for Apple, since they get about $100 billion in revenue each year from the US alone, with a large percentage of that in pure profit.

They don't need repatriated cash for this $1 billion/year investment.

It's a pretty small US investment, really.

That's why they spend their cash on dividends. Dividends basically means they a company has better idea on what to spend their money on than to just give it back to their shareholders.