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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

#251

Post by croon »

autokad wrote: post #238
gonvaled wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It legislated a reduction in tax revenue hoping / pretending that an increase in economic activity will offset the reduction. Fact 1: reduced tax rate and revenue Fact 2: permanent beneffit to corporations, in the form of tax reductions Bet 1: the economy will grow Bet 2: the proffits will trickle down Bet 3: increase in economy will allow to fullfill obligations If the bets do not materialize, nobody cares. That is,…

i already received 1,000$, to which I spent on a new energy efficient door, to which I paid a handyman to install it. there is a lot more winners than your dogma suggests. I am interested in seeing where this goes. if we do see wage growth from it, it provides evidence to a lot of questions about how the cost of healthcare was squeezing out our wages. if it doesnt, then a lot of complaints about corporations will hav…

> I am interested in seeing where this goes. if we do see wage growth from it, it provides evidence to a lot of questions about how the cost of healthcare was squeezing out our wages. if it doesnt, then a lot of complaints about corporations will have a lot more evidence.

Spoiler alert: It's a remake. Trickle-down doesn't work.

Investing significant money in businesses doesn't create more work. Increasing demand creates more work. How do you do that? You put more money into the hands of consumers, which is the opposite of what this bill did.

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

#252

Post by lr4444lr »

krebby wrote: post #12
crusso wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they finally pay for part of what they owe You only owe the taxes that the law compels you to pay. There's no obligation whatsoever to pay a dime more. Do you personally look to pay the maximum amount of taxes that you could possibly justify through various readings of the tax code? Because I guarantee that your tax software or your tax accountant are not "taking advantage" of opportunities for you to pay more unless…

No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary in Ireland that owns my intellectual property and pays me dividends for my freelance work. To pretend that they didn't go above and beyond to avoid paying taxes is lunacy.

You also don't have shareholders to answer to.

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

#253

Post by benjaminl »

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, if a British company earns income in Germany, its pays German taxes on its German income. But if a US company earns income in Germany it pays both German taxes and US taxes.

What is little known about this tax bill is that it normalizes our tax system with the rest of the world by moving to a territorial tax system. This is not about Apple avoiding tax on profit earned in the US, they will continue to pay US taxes, they won't pay taxes on income earned outside of the US going forward. [0] That means that there won't be any more hordes of overseas profits. And means the end of those tax inversions or corporate inversions you have been hearing about. [1]

So now that foreign profits aren't going to be taxed, something needed to be done with all the profits generated under the old system. The 23% repatriation tax is a compromise between the new rate of effectively 0% and the old rate of 39%. This BTW happens to be very close to the OECD, the developed world's, average tax rate of 24%.

Edit: As was astutely pointed out below the US only pays additional taxes to the US if their US tax bill was higher than their German one. And they paid the difference between to two to the US.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11430290

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11429859

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

#254

Post by jlmorton »

downandout wrote: post #245
onezerozeroone wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you or I decided we just didn't like the tax rate that applied to us and didn't pay our taxes for decades at a time on income we made overseas, what do you think would happen? Corporations are treated as people only when it's convenient. You and I don't have high-powered lawyers, lobbyists, loopholes, offshore accounts, subsidiaries, etc to hide behind. This is an insult to every U.S. citizen...Apple wouldn't exis…

While I agree with you to some degree, we have the system we have. It has somehow survived through both tax-and-spend Democratic and fiscally conservative Republican administrations. It had to be fixed. So what say what you will about the current administration, they managed to get something done that even some of the most tax-hungry politicians in the nation previously failed to do.

> So what say what you will about the current administration, they managed to get something done that even some of the most tax-hungry politicians in the nation previously failed to do.

This is not terribly unique. We had a very similar (slightly more generous) repatriation tax holiday during the Bush Administration, in 2004.

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

#255

Post by dmix »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #239

Alternate headline: "Apple dodges $49B in taxes by waiting for a tax holiday". They reduced their rate on $250B of earnings from 35% to 15.5% by waiting for a new tax policy. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/apple-plans-to-p...

Apple continues to act in predictable self-interest, American economy will no longer miss out on billions as tax policy was updated to reflect the realities of a globalized world

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

#256

Post by jdc »

airstrike wrote: post #233
onezerozeroone wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you or I decided we just didn't like the tax rate that applied to us and didn't pay our taxes for decades at a time on income we made overseas, what do you think would happen? Corporations are treated as people only when it's convenient. You and I don't have high-powered lawyers, lobbyists, loopholes, offshore accounts, subsidiaries, etc to hide behind. This is an insult to every U.S. citizen...Apple wouldn't exis…

I get your point. Only caveat is corporations also create jobs and pay their workers, but you and I as individuals do not. I know lots of Apple workers (directly or indirectly) are in China, but I wanted to point out why it's inappropriate to compare personal and corporate taxes.

IMHO, corporations don't create jobs any more than the workers and consumers do.

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

#257

Post by jacquesm »

sigstoat wrote: post #27
krebby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary in Ireland that owns my intellectual property and pays me dividends for my freelance work. To pretend that they didn't go above and beyond to avoid paying taxes is lunacy.

> 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 kind of comment is called 'whataboutism'.

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

#258

Post by tengbretson »

SapphireSun wrote: post #235

This is a diversion tactic. They're grabbing 252.3B and spending less than a fifth of it. Let's imagine a different world. 200B, divided by 50k + 1.5x overhead (75k) could create about 2.6M decent jobs for one year (or 1.3M for two years etc). 2.6M jobs is equal to 0.8% of the total US population. The total labor force size is about 160M (~1/2 the total population) and the U6 measure of unemployment is about 8%. A he…

So now that we've looted the reserves of Apple to fix all our problems for 1-2 years, what will be the next golden goose we would choose to slaughter?

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

#259

Post by rdtsc »

onezerozeroone wrote: post #213
downandout wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We currently get $0 in tax revenue from the cash Apple is hoarding overseas. This tax “holiday” (a term I dislike because it incorrectly implies that no tax is being paid on the repatriation, when it is simply a reduced rate) is resulting in $38 billion that we would not have otherwise received. $38,000,000,000 > $0

If you or I decided we just didn't like the tax rate that applied to us and didn't pay our taxes for decades at a time on income we made overseas, what do you think would happen? Corporations are treated as people only when it's convenient. You and I don't have high-powered lawyers, lobbyists, loopholes, offshore accounts, subsidiaries, etc to hide behind. This is an insult to every U.S. citizen...Apple wouldn't exis…

True it seems we are getting the crumbs here falling between the cracks. But what is another realistic scenario? Tax them even more? Wouldn't they move to another tax haven. Why didn't that work so far, these tax tricks are not new.

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

#260

Post by pfarnsworth »

SapphireSun wrote: post #235

This is a diversion tactic. They're grabbing 252.3B and spending less than a fifth of it. Let's imagine a different world. 200B, divided by 50k + 1.5x overhead (75k) could create about 2.6M decent jobs for one year (or 1.3M for two years etc). 2.6M jobs is equal to 0.8% of the total US population. The total labor force size is about 160M (~1/2 the total population) and the U6 measure of unemployment is about 8%. A he…

Crisis? Unemployment is almost at all-time lows.
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