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

theguardian.com

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

#71

Post by discardorama »

kumarm wrote: post #70
discardorama wrote: post #68

What's forgotten in this discussion are the property taxes in Cupertino. The property values in Cupertino are among the highest in the Bay Area, and with that comes more property taxes. I doubt Cupertino would be this desirable were it not for Apple (and the school district). So once again Apple, albeit indirectly, helps pad city coffers.

Most residents of Cupertino pay very little property tax due to prop 13. Some residents pay 3000$ for the same house when their neighbors pay 18000$.

"Most" requires some hard data; and whether the fraction is higher or lower than the neighboring areas. Prop 13 is California-wide, so it's not specific to Cupertino.

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

#73

Post by lewis500 »

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 incredible story as plain fact? If you buy this story, I've got a pile of Trump steaks and a bottle of hot sauce from Hillary's purse to sell you. So, Barry takes a couple steps into the lobby, and the security just leaps out from behind a plant and says, "Whoever you are, you're not invited. You cannot come in." Sure. Was it the main public entrance lobby or like did he walk in behind someone else into an office building? If he wanted to talk to a higher-up, had he made an appointment? Is it that crazy that local politicians can't just walk into corporations without making an appointment and say, "I want to talk to the man in charge! Several thousand people voted for me!" Did a whole "team" really "surround" him? He makes it sound like it was a hostage situation.

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

#74

Post by nihonde »

fit2rule wrote: post #44
nihonde wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating the world's most successful company in your backyard, attracting high-value talent from all over the world, making Cupertino a household name...is "giving nothing back"?

How do any of those things improve the lives of non-Apple citizens living in Cupertino?

That's a fair question. A massively successful technology company can locate itself just about anywhere it wants to. In fact, there are plenty of places that will offer very compelling incentives to a company like Apple to move into their locality. Why would they do that if it's of no benefit to the people? I guess you could argue that corrupt politicians will offer those incentives to secure bribes, etc., but here you have the mayor of Cupertino complaining.

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

#75

Post by drzaiusapelord »

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 internet-friendly narrative of government being bullied by evil corporations is a fairly unrealistic. Its usually the other way around.

I find it amusing that so many have an undying love for Jobs' judgement in business, technology, etc but his political dealings give them pause because it goes against the left's idea of how the world works. Jobs didn't act like this to be difficult, he said and did these things because its one of the more effective ways to control a city government that can hurt or even destroy your business trivially.

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

#76

Post by nihonde »

kuschku wrote: post #63
dragontamer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this idea. Corporations should pay taxes and whatever, and not be treated specially just because they're the largest entity in the town. A huge number of towns in America are basically run by one or two corporations. Cupertino is not unique in the slightest, aside from the fact that Apple is just a larger company. But it really doesn't matter if you "only" have a $1 Billion market cap company headquarter…

There is a solution how you can get both. The German city of Wolfsburg, and the state of Niedersachsen have done it with VW. The solution: You just buy a large amount of shares of the companies that are started in your city. Municipalities get a far larger share of the profits directly, politicians have an incentive to ensure companies are profitable, and companies can’t avoid paying for the infrastructure they use.

That's an excellent point——can you imagine if the government of Cupertino bought AAPL shares in the 1980s? They sure wouldn't be complaining about tax revenues today!

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

#77

Post by Loque »

It's not just apple, it is every company that dodges taxes. Making an example of apple is not fair - everyone should pay their taxes... who knows how the systems we have in place would actually work if people used it the way it is designed (instead of finding loopholes for their own benefit).

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

#78

Post by pluckytree »

imgabe wrote: post #65

Slightly off topic, but is that really the design for Apple's new headquarters, a giant ring? So if you want to get from a place on one side to the other, you have to walk halfway around the circle or cut through the giant park in the middle? That seems horribly inefficient.

Related teams tend to sit close to each other in any case, so this is a worst case scenario. Which isn’t really that bad anyways. It’s good exercise and a rectangular building holding 14,000 people would also require a lot of walking. Sure, it could be many, many rectangular buildings which everyone else does, which would require even more walking. Not to mentain there’s a huge benefit in productivity for 14,000 people to all get abundant natural sunlight, which is available to only a fraction of the people in a standard campus. Vitamin D is deficient in many people and engineers typically don’t get out much. I’d say it’s a win-win for everyone. Finally, the campus is pretty compact, leading to a ton of open space, which, combined with natural light, will likely lead to greater productivity and also be a great attraction to new employees who value the look and feel of their work environment very highly.

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

#79

Post by hardlianotion »

afsina wrote: post #40
mdasen wrote: post #18

Absolutely terrible article. In an article about property taxes paid or unpaid, it doesn't even mention property taxes. Is Apple's campus under-assessed? A little Googling shows Cupertino's tax rate as $7.96 on a thousand which would value Apple's campus at $1.16B. Is that a lot? Is that a little? What are other companies assessed at in Cupertino and surrounding cities? The article talks about income taxes which are…

"The Guardian" has a left leaning bias. So I am not surprised with the way of reporting.

I think it is worse than that. The paper often appears transparently dishonest in its reporting.

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

#80

Post by pluckytree »

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…

What happened was he tried to get in and the one security guard told him he dad to be escorted by an employee, just as the sign said. Hundreds of people do this every day, thinking they will be able to see the campus on the inside. The only people that get escorted out are protestors who storm the lobby.
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