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Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

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Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#411

Post by valuearb »

tazard wrote: post #245
repomies691 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whe…

Apple isn't increasing suffering by creating laptops. They are increasing suffering by not paying taxes. It is possible to enrich lives of some people, and increase suffering if others at the same time.

They are the biggest taxpayer in the world. By all rights they should pay less taxes, the current tax rate on Apple profits is over 60%.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#412

Post by johannes1234321 »

chris_t wrote: post #280
tyingq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

This is the key point that is so often missed. Getting angry at Apple et al for following their incentives rationally is silly. I'd love to see journalists doing a better job of explaining the failures of the tax system rather than peddling pointless outrage, but I suppose that they too are following their incentives rationally; outrage gets more clicks.

Being angry at Apple can turn it into a value to behave "nice" If consumers decide to buy products of companies which don't play such tricks then we get the free market way of changing the behavior of those companies (... while it's unlikely to really have impact as along as everybody does it and consumers want cheap products)

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#413

Post by jamesblonde »

josejuanisaac wrote: post #390
loceng wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

“They are doing it too” is legally a valid excuse. The way legal disputes get settled usually is based on the outcome of precedent legal cases and how they relate to the current case. Your moral outrage (and the outrage caused by paradise papers type reports) is just a failure to see the world for what it is. An ant can complain all day about the size of the mammoth, complain that it’s unfair that it’s got a fur coat…

Precedent legal cases is the common law system in the former commonwealth countries and the US. The Napoleanic system is in-place in Germany and much of Europe.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#414

Post by tyingq »

freeflight wrote: post #386
tyingq wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. One that's probably more relatable is itemized deductions for US taxpayers. I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. Do people take advantage of that and deduct the costs for ridiculous mansions? Sure. Shaming them for it is silly. If that exemption isn't fair, then put a ca…

> That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't always the only solution. And with something as abstract as "taxation" I think it's usually a rather bad approach because new regulations will only result in new loopholes being created, it's an endless cat&mouse game wasting a lot of resources for everybody in…

Ahh, that helps me understand better. Hard to be completely clear in a global context though.

Nike, for example, has a company in a tax haven that owns the intellectual IP for "the swoosh". It receives payments from other Nike companies for the "right to use".

That loophole has to exist, as any company, in any country, could be an IP holder.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#415

Post by nothrabannosir »

tyingq wrote: post #240
loceng wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

> They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though.

OK, but that doesn't really matter. Legality and morality diverge further the higher up you go in scale.

There was a thread on here a month ago about how, at the size of the Moon, solids don't behave like solids anymore. They behave more like fluids. The Moon wouldn't shatter into bits if you "broke" it, it would just stick together. It is a good analogy for law: the bigger you go, the more malleable and "un-law like" it is. It becomes a fluid.

Multinationals can bend law. They can influence it. Law bends around their gravitational pull.

(edit: I think you meant your comment slightly differently to what I interpreted, I'll leave it up.)

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#416

Post by nickpp »

maxxxxx wrote: post #397
nickpp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise some good points. But I strongly believe in the innovative solutions brought forth by the free markets. It's not called "the invisible hand" for nothing. I am old enough to remember when whole IT industry used to be in the shadow of Microsoft (and IBM before that). Nobody could see a solution out of it! The government even tried to fix the problem and failed. Ten years later, Microsoft is becoming a nice pl…

The problem is that you just traded one large shark for another. Small companies still get quashed just by another behemoth.

The proof that that's not true is that whose second-generation sharks DO appear. Not all small companies get squashed, and some of them grow large enough to grow into sharks themselves, thus breaking the monopoly.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#417

Post by stult »

josejuanisaac wrote: post #390
loceng wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

“They are doing it too” is legally a valid excuse. The way legal disputes get settled usually is based on the outcome of precedent legal cases and how they relate to the current case. Your moral outrage (and the outrage caused by paradise papers type reports) is just a failure to see the world for what it is. An ant can complain all day about the size of the mammoth, complain that it’s unfair that it’s got a fur coat…

Other people are doing it too is NOT legally a valid excuse for anything.

Source: tax lawyer.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#418

Post by valuearb »

zajd wrote: post #251
nickpp wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I can't. I am a working man, not a philosopher. But please look around you. Every great thing around me was created by a free(-ish) market: this PC, my car, my job, the materials in my home, the heating engine, the food I get in the restaurant, the entertainment on my TV, everything. Then every crappy experience in my existence has something to do with the government: state hospitals, infrastructure, the DMV a…

You really think the PC is a good example of something "created by a free market" not the result of the govt pouring millions into R&D in the decades previous?

LOL. The PC was nearly entirely a free market phenomenon. It’s like sayming cars wouldn’t exist without governments switching warships to oil, most developments are inevitable regardless of government actions.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#419

Post by cr1895 »

earthtolazlo wrote: post #111
erickj wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving abroad, I now fully understand the feeling behind "Taxation without representation is tyranny".

You are welcome to give up your American citizenship if that income tax becomes too burdensome for you.

All other things aside, the American taxation-by-citizehship instead of residence has some nasty and unfortunate consequences that your comment suggests you've never considered.

Some Dutch people in the Netherlands who were incidentally born in the US (ergo, also US citizens) but have never lived or worked in the US are now presented with the absurd scenario of actually having to do what you suggest. Of course this is just one country; in principle it applies to anyone who returned home to another country after being born in the US.

Here is the case of a woman, who was taken by her parents back to the NL as a baby, now has to establish herself first in a country in which she's never worked or lived in order to renounce an unwanted citizenship. She must get a social security number, file six years of previous taxes to a foreign country, and only then can she seek renouncing of her US citizenship. In case you were unaware, simply renouncing also costs several thousand dollars.

https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2044332-amerikaanse-belasti...

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/06/us-tax-service...

So yeah, just give it up! Piece of cake! /s

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#420

Post by improbable22 »

valuearb wrote: post #380
improbable22 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will people travel to this tax haven to buy their computers? Will Apple's employees all move there to write software? Nope. What we mean by Apple operating in (say) Germany is these things: they make sales there, and they have employees there. Where the letterhead says they're incorporated... isn't this just an implementation detail? It's like asking where their datacenter is located. It's in the cloud, who cares…

apple already pays huge amounts of taxes to germany. It just doesn’t pay large amounts of a specific tax called “income tax” because it isn’t based in Germany.

But "income tax" is a misleading name for this. It's a tax on corporate profits.

The letter wants you to compare this rate to _your_ rate of income tax and be shocked. But this is stupid, the corporation is not a human being.

For those profits to be enjoyed by anyone, they have to be paid out again as salary, or dividend, or recovered by selling shares... and these transactions are all taxed. And, of course, all of this money which is now profit was taxed when whoever bought the computer was charged VAT.

(Who signs the check to the tax man on each of these transactions is irrelevant, but another common way to mislead people for outrage. The tax man stands between you and Apple and demands VAT... and between Apple and their employee and demands income tax... how this is collected is, again, an implementation detail.)

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