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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

#91

Post by goldbrick »

jessriedel wrote: post #86
goldbrick wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) the developer doesn't "bring" business to the area, they are supported by their clients and are responding to economic incentives, same as anyone else. 2) if you do perceive them as "bringing" business, then it's only right to equally perceive them as bringing congestion, pollution, and all the other undesirable side effects of economic activity. 3) when does one ever "own" land? Property rights are enforced by th…

> Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that. The compensation they extract has nothing to do with the cost of enforcing property rights, because those costs are trivial.

Not trivial at all, just mostly invisible and most of us who've only known modern western societies never give it a second thought.

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

#92

Post by jessriedel »

goldbrick wrote: post #91
jessriedel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that. The compensation they extract has nothing to do with the cost of enforcing property rights, because those costs are trivial.

Not trivial at all, just mostly invisible and most of us who've only known modern western societies never give it a second thought.

Try again. Law enforcement was just 9% of the Cupertino municipal budget in 2015.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1222

What fraction of that do you want to bet has anything to do with protecting private property, as opposed to the large revenue generating activities like parking tickets?

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

#93

Post by justin66 »

dragontamer wrote: post #60
justin66 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he'd been a police officer investigating a crime, or a fire marshall, that wouldn't fly. Doing it to the mayor is just rude.

> If he'd been a police officer investigating a crime, Which means he'd have to have a warrant. If an Officer was "just investigating", they have to be invited or have a court order to get onto private property. In America anyway.

It's not quite that simple. If the police officer has probable cause to believe a crime is in progress, or the fire marshal believes a dangerous code violation might exist, woe to the dumbass who tries to escort them off the property.

Otherwise, yes, a police investigator needs permission, or a warrant, to go onto the Apple campus and ask questions or look around.

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

#94

Post by jinushaun »

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…

Oh yeah, I remember that guy from the hearing. It's incredible he still has a job. His remarks were so sleazy and obviously corrupt.

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

#95

Post by WavingThe44 »

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…

In my limited experience, any kind of negotiation where the parties have a weak or a bit of an adversarial relationship, will probably degenerate into this kind of shin-kicking and posturing about walking away on both sides.

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

#96

Post by cauterized »

martinald wrote: post #15

In the UK we have the concept of "Section 106" payments which allow a development through planning by the developer paying the local government some amount of money to redress the cost of dealing with congestion, public relam, affordable housing, etc. For large skyscraper developments in London, this can be many many millions of pounds. Does something similar exist in CA?

In the US, it's more likely for a locality to pay a developer (often in the form of tax credits) to build in its area or to pay a company to move there. The theory is that it'll increase the local tax base and be a net positive, but as you point out there are also externalities and additional burdens borne by existing infrastructure and citizens.

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

#97

Post by spiralpolitik »

martinald wrote: post #15

In the UK we have the concept of "Section 106" payments which allow a development through planning by the developer paying the local government some amount of money to redress the cost of dealing with congestion, public relam, affordable housing, etc. For large skyscraper developments in London, this can be many many millions of pounds. Does something similar exist in CA?

California is a unique snowflake when it comes to planning and development. Mostly due to a number of issues:

1) Prop 13 allows commercial property owners to avoid tax reassessment when the property is transferred (they sell the shell company owning the property rather than the property itself so the property doesn't trigger a reassessment) . This means a lot of property owners are paying 80s or 90s levels of property tax rather than the amount they should be paying under current rates thus depriving cities of revenue.

2) NIMBYs. CA and especially the Bay Area is full of people that are supportive of building more infrastructure or housing as long as it isn't built where they live. They fear that any kind of infrastructure (roads, public transit) or new development (affordable housing) will bring "the wrong sort of people" into the area and affect their property prices. Cupertino and other valley cities are notorious for not building enough housing relative to the number of office space for this reason.

3). Environment impact studies. Any proposed development needs one of these and if your plan gets sucked into the detailed version then it can take years or even decades to get the project approved. If people don't approve of your development then generally they get lawyer-ed up and file a review. This will stop most developers cold as nobody wants to spent years and potentially millions dollars in court before they can break ground.

So there you have it. It generally considered to be impossible to get any large infrastructure project built in California in under 20 years. See the high speed rail project. 19 years to deliver a link between two nowhere towns (Merced and Bakersfield). China is positively rolling in the aisle with laughter.

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

#98

Post by pflats »

justin66 wrote: post #16
sourcd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, in some countries, you can't treat an on duty public/government "servant" like that.

If he'd been a police officer investigating a crime, or a fire marshall, that wouldn't fly. Doing it to the mayor is just rude.

And walking into someone's place of work uninvited, expecting them to drop everything and meet with you isn't rude?

I'd be rightly ticked off if someone did that to me, and I'm not one of the worlds richest and most secretive companies.

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

#100

Post by whatok »

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.

This is an awful idea. Governments do not have the expertise to participate as an psuedo-activist investor. On top of that, what happens when the city's crown jewel goes bankrupt and those shares go to zero? Diversification is key. There's a reason why there were so many pension changes post-Enron. It's not good for individuals to be so heavily concentrated into a single company and it sure is not good for cities.
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