• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Liberal icon Apple's tax scam

Steve

Well-known member
here is essentially how the use tax avoidance to pay almost no taxes on a huge chunk of their profit..

One of the Irish entities, Apple Sales International, before 2012 had no employees, and two of its three directors are Apple Inc. employees located at California headquarters. All 33 ASI board meetings between May 2006 and March 2012 took place in Cupertino, the report found.

ASI buys Apple's finished products from a Chinese manufacturer, resells them at a higher price to Apple affiliates, and retains the profits, the report said.

From 2009 to 2012, the ASI arrangement facilitated a shift of about $74 billion in global profits away from the U.S., the report said, and the entity paid little in taxes worldwide. In 2011, ASI’s pretax earnings were $22 billion, and it paid just $10 million in taxes – a tax rate of 0.05 percent.

so by "creating" a middleman it owns.. .. the company sucks off the profit before the product is imported to the lucrative US market..

a company with no employees and virtually no presence in the other country..

to top it off.. cause that wasn't enough..
The offshore entities of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company have paid little or no tax in recent years, the probe found.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com

One Apple affiliate – Apple Operations International – generated net income of $30 billion between 2009 and 2012, and declined to declare a tax residence, filed no corporate tax return and payed no income taxes to any nation, the report said. AOI is Apple's principal offshore holding company.

"Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,"

"Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere."

maybe the offshore countries are liberal countries with no borders.. and internet "cloud based.. no that can't be cause if it was a liberal country the tax rate would be excruciating, instead of NOTHING.


I don't own a single apple product.. I just don't like them..
 

Steve

Well-known member
and meanwhile.. they do the same to avoid state an local taxes..

“With a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.”

Yes, I know. What they've done in seeking out every loophole from Eire to eternity is technically legal.

here is my thoughts on apple.. they complain and whine about a situation they are causing...

yet they complain and want more foreign workers allowed in to lower their employee costs..claiming US universities do not churn out enough IT folk...

if they paid taxes.. that money would help educate those students in the US ...

A mile and a half from Apple's Cupertino headquarters is De Anza College, a community college that Steve Wozniak, one of Apple's founders, attended from 1969 to 1974. Because of California's state budget crisis, De Anza has cut more than a thousand courses and 8 percent of its faculty since 2008. Now, De Anza faces a budget gap so large that it is confronting a ''death spiral,''

and hire students like my son and many of his friends.. who have degrees from a top US engineering university.. who have not worked in their field yet... three years after graduating.. and some would move to china just to get apple's name on their resume
 

lonewolvie

Well-known member
This what I think is going on with these companies. There're liberal in public, but behind closed doors, they're something else. When it comes to business, they do not believe in redistribution, only in public.
 

Steve

Well-known member
still not sure if you dislike this liberal icon..
He doesn't give any money to charity. And when he became Apple's CEO he stopped all of their philanthropic programs. He said, "wait until we are profitable". Now they are profitable, and sitting on $40b cash, and still not corporate philanthropy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-altucher/steve-jobs-resigns_b_935874.html

skips taxes.. doesn't give to charity... no wonder it is a liberal icon.. :p

I guess I can't get in line with rand Paul on this one.. apple is scum.. from it's cheap Chinese slave factory.. (where jumping to their death seems to be the only way to leave),... to tax avoidance to cheap on charity..

Liberals must outright worship this company.. it is as hypocritical as they are..

BTW.. why aren't they smashing their Iphones in the street out of protest? :shock: :? :p :roll:
 

Steve

Well-known member
lonewolvie said:
This what I think is going on with these companies. There're liberal in public, but behind closed doors, they're something else. When it comes to business, they do not believe in redistribution, only in public.

they sure have the liberals hoodwinked as it seems the more liberal a person is.. the more they worship Apple..






as for what they are behind closed doors.. greedy,.. smart.. but greedy..
 

Mike

Well-known member
Rand Paul says going after Apple is a witch-hunt. Just another front to make the public hate corporations. After all, corporations shouldn't have to pay income taxes because they just pass it off to the customer.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Mike said:
Rand Paul says going after Apple is a witch-hunt. Just another front to make the public hate corporations. After all, corporations shouldn't have to pay income taxes because they just pass it off to the customer.

I don't doubt that the investigation into corporations methods of avoiding taxes is a witch hunt... under the guise of closing loopholes...

but if you or I or any company tried to pull what apple gets away with.. we would be either fined and have our assets seized by the IRS or fight a life long losing battle with them..(while they held our seized assets)..

it is shocking at the lengths apple goes to avoid paying taxes.. but it is also just as shocking that it is actually legal..
 

iwannabeacowboy

Well-known member
Steve said:
Mike said:
Rand Paul says going after Apple is a witch-hunt. Just another front to make the public hate corporations. After all, corporations shouldn't have to pay income taxes because they just pass it off to the customer.

I don't doubt that the investigation into corporations methods of avoiding taxes is a witch hunt... under the guise of closing loopholes...

but if you or I or any company tried to pull what apple gets away with.. we would be either fined and have our assets seized by the IRS or fight a life long losing battle with them..(while they held our seized assets)..

it is shocking at the lengths apple goes to avoid paying taxes.. but it is also just as shocking that it is actually legal..

I think someone around here calls it corporatism which is different than capitalism, but most of the low information voters won't comprehend that.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
iwannabeacowboy said:
Steve said:
Mike said:
Rand Paul says going after Apple is a witch-hunt. Just another front to make the public hate corporations. After all, corporations shouldn't have to pay income taxes because they just pass it off to the customer.

I don't doubt that the investigation into corporations methods of avoiding taxes is a witch hunt... under the guise of closing loopholes...

but if you or I or any company tried to pull what apple gets away with.. we would be either fined and have our assets seized by the IRS or fight a life long losing battle with them..(while they held our seized assets)..

it is shocking at the lengths apple goes to avoid paying taxes.. but it is also just as shocking that it is actually legal..

I think someone around here calls it corporatism which is different than capitalism, but most of the low information voters won't comprehend that.

As I have said many times...the US would be better off if they got back to Capitalism, which they haven't seen in decades. But that is the fault of the "left", in their attempt to control everything, that everyone does, not the "right".

Hitler too, wanted to controll what individuals and corporations did, with their money.... :wink:
 

iwannabeacowboy

Well-known member
hypocritexposer said:
iwannabeacowboy said:
Steve said:
I don't doubt that the investigation into corporations methods of avoiding taxes is a witch hunt... under the guise of closing loopholes...

but if you or I or any company tried to pull what apple gets away with.. we would be either fined and have our assets seized by the IRS or fight a life long losing battle with them..(while they held our seized assets)..

it is shocking at the lengths apple goes to avoid paying taxes.. but it is also just as shocking that it is actually legal..

I think someone around here calls it corporatism which is different than capitalism, but most of the low information voters won't comprehend that.

As I have said many times...the US would be better off if they got back to Capitalism, which they haven't seen in decades. But that is the fault of the "left", in their attempt to control everything, that everyone does, not the "right".

Hitler too, wanted to controll what individuals and corporations did, with their money.... :wink:

Well, they'll probably get 501c status since they aren't wasting money on the destitute and homeless or worse- spreading Christianity or information about freedoms. Maybe even matching contributions?
 

lonewolvie

Well-known member
Another reason why income tax needs to be abolished, how do they get away without paying, study the 65,000 pages and see how. If you have enough money for good lawyers, you'll get a lower rate too. Also, who is it that writes all of these tax laws, politicians who use the tax code for political paybacks for campaign donations.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Well, they'll probably get 501c status since they aren't wasting money on the destitute and homeless or worse- spreading Christianity or information about freedoms. Maybe even matching contributions?

the phones are free.. so Apple who makes a huge profit on them should be able to claim it is a charity, even if they make a huge profit off the Iphone giveaway.. after all they are free ...

There is apparently a welfare program that grants smartphones to eligible recipients because no one should be without a phone these days.

And to prevent abuse and too many minutes adding up at taxpayer expense, our thoughtful crafters of Entitlement Programs limited the number of minutes that each phone could rack up in a month. Well, one enterprising young lady, not to be held down to just her alloted minutes, managed to secure herself 5 iPhones!

Yes, that is a woman in an SEIU t-shirt with her own cell phone waiting in line to receive a free cell phone provided by taxpayers. When ABC 7 Chicago's Ben Bradlee asked her why she needs taxpayers to pay for her phone when she already has one she replied, "I could stop paying for it."

so indirectly Apple is getting a subsidy as well... :? :shock:
 

Mike

Well-known member
Thomas Sowell

The Bullying Pulpit

We have truly entered the world of "Alice in Wonderland" when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to "a worrisome federal deficit," according to Senator Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of "gimmicks" used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, "children across the country won't get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained."

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven't.

What is a tax "loophole"? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like "gimmicks" and "loopholes" suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don't pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a "gimmick" or a "loophole"? Or are only other people's deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that "the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it."

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when "public servants" become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government's power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration's political agenda?

The government's power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks' rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, "any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself." And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it "the road to serfdom."

How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
 
Top