Apple! A tax evasion
In a ruling handed down this morning, Apple was given a $14.5 billion bill for back taxes by the European Commission, related to its business in Europe and Ireland. Apple’s tax situation, including the hundreds of billions in cash held offshore, has always been a hot topic for the company. But how did it land in this mess, and who does it even owe money to anyway?
The situation right now is a little unclear. This morning’s ruling was given by the European Commission, which says that both Apple and Ireland made a tax arrangement against the rules of the EU. As a result, Apple owes money to Ireland, but the country disagrees. In a statement, the Finance Minister said he “disagrees profoundly” with the EC’s ruling, and will appeal.
As you might expect, Apple is also planning on launching an appeal. CEO Tim Cook argues that because Apple complied with Irish tax authorities, there shouldn’t be any penalties applied, and Cook is confident that Apple’s case will “ultimately prevail.” Oh, and the US government is also on Apple’s side, accusing the EU in a statement last week of acting as a “supra-national tax authority.”
https://bgr.com/2016/08/30/apple-tax-evasion-ireland-eu-explained-penalty-fine/
Fact Sheet: Apple and Tax Avoidance
Apple is the most valuable public company[i] of all time with a market value of more than $800 billion.[ii] Last year, it cleared $45.7 billion[iii] in profits after taxes, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500 for the third straight year.
Apple is also particularly adept at avoiding U.S. taxes on these gargantuan profits. The major strategy Apple uses to reduce its U.S. tax bill is to artificially shift large amounts of its domestic profits into tax havens. This allows Apple to avoid paying U.S. taxes on these profits while also paying very little in foreign taxes. This is possible due to a loophole in the tax code called “deferral” that allows U.S. multinational corporations to forego taxes on profits of their foreign subsidiaries until they are paid as dividends to the U.S. parent company. Like many other multinationals, Apple exploits this loophole by using accounting maneuvers to shift its U.S. profits overseas (often only on paper) and then indefinitely deferring U.S. taxes on them.
Quick Facts: Apple’s Offshore Profits
Fact Sheet: Apple and Tax Avoidance
Apple is the most valuable public company1 of all time with a market value of more than $800 billion.
2 Last year, it cleared
$45.7 billion3 in profits after taxes, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500 for the third straight year.
Apple is also particularly adept at avoiding U.S. taxes on these gargantuan profits. The major strategy Apple uses to reduce its
U.S. tax bill is to artificially shift large amounts of its domestic profits into tax havens. This allows Apple to avoid paying U.S.
taxes on these profits while also payingvery little in foreign taxes. This is possible due to a loophole in the tax code called
“deferral” that allows U.S. multinational corporations to forego taxes on profits of their foreign subsidiaries until they are paid
as dividends to the U.S. parent company. Like many other multinationals, Apple exploits this loophole by using accounting
maneuvers to shift its U.S. profits overseas (often only on paper) and then indefinitely deferring U.S. taxes on them.
Quick Facts: Apple’s Offshore Profits
• Apple has booked $252.3 billion4 in profits offshore on which it has not paid a dime in U.S. taxes. It’s offshore sum is
greater than any other company.5 This is nearly 10 percent of the total $2.6 trillion in profits that U.S. Fortune 500
companies disclose holding offshore.
• By keeping these profits offshore, Apple is avoiding $78.5 billion in U.S. taxes.6
• A repatriation rate of 12 percent, as proposed by the GOP, would generateat least $51.6 billion in tax savings for
Apple.
Apple’s Tax Dodging Strategy
• Between 2008 and 2015, Apple earned $305 billion before taxes, and paid a foreign tax rate of only 5.8% during this
time.7
• Apple was able to achieve this low foreign rate by shifting a large portion of its profits into its three Irish subsidiaries.
8
• A Senate investigation in 2013 found that two of Apple’s Irish subsidiaries were structured so that, for tax purposes,
they weren’t “residents” of either Ireland or the U.S., allowing them to pay almost nothing to either country.9
• Last year, European authorities charged Ireland with illegally cutting a special tax deal with Applethat gave the
company a tax rate as low as 0.005%, lowering its Irish tax bill by over $14 billion.10
• Much of the profits that Apple has assigned to its Irish subsidiaries is actually held in U.S. bank accounts and
government bonds, but it can avoid U.S. taxes on these amounts because for tax purposes, the profits are under
“foreign control.”11
1 Business Insider, “Apple just broke its own record as the most valuable publicly traded company of all time” (May 8, 2017).
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-becomes-the-most-valuable-publicly-traded-company-of-all-time-2017-5 2 MarketWatch, “Apple, Inc. – Key Data” (Retrieved Oct. 26, 2017). https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/AAPL
3 Fortune, “The Fortune 500's 10 Most Profitable Companies,"(June 7, 2017). http://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-500-
companies-profit-apple-berkshire-hathaway/ 4 ITEP analysis of 10-K filing. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/0000320193-17-000070-index.htm 5 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), “Offshore Shell Games 2017” (October 2017), p. 2. https://itep.org/wpcontent/uploads/offshoreshellgames2017.pdf
6 ITEP analysis of 10-K filing. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/0000320193-17-000070-index.htm 7 ITEP, “The 35 Percent Corporate Tax Myth” (March 2017), p. 34. https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/35percentfullreport.pdf 8 ITEP, “Offshore Shell Games,” p. 25.
9U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Statement of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich) Before U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations on Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code – Part 2 (Apple, Inc.)” (May 21, 2013).
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=3C1C51C9-B56C-4AB5-8887-ABEF800BD076 10 European Commission, “State Aid: Ireland Gave Illegal Tax Benefits to Apple Worth Up To €13 Billion” (Aug. 30, 2016).
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm 11New York Times, “For U.S. Companies, Money ‘Offshore’ Means Manhattan” (May 21, 2013).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/for-us-companies-money-offshore-means-manhattan.html
https://itep.org/fact-sheet-apple-and-tax-avoidance/
After a tax crackdown, Apple found a new shelter for its profits
Five months after Mr. Cook’s testimony, Irish officials began to crack down on the tax structure Apple had exploited. So the iPhone maker went hunting for another place to park its profits, newly leaked records show. With help from law firms that specialize in offshore tax shelters, the company canvassed multiple jurisdictions before settling on the small island of Jersey, which typically does not tax corporate income.
Apple has accumulated more than $128 billion in profits offshore, and probably much more, that is untaxed by the United States and hardly touched by any other country. Nearly all of that was made over the past decade.
Apple is the largest company in the world, so they’re the big target – but tons of other companies engage in the same shady activities.
Every euro or dollar Apple, Google, and Facebook dodge in taxes is a euro or dollar regular folk like you and I have to pay instead. These companies make use of all the facilities and infrastructure paid for by our tax euros and dollars, but then turn around and stab society in the back by extracting vast sums of wealth from it without paying their fair share of taxes. It’s exactly this reason why the divide between rich and poor is growing exponentially, which in turn is destabilising our communities because it becomes ever clearer that the Tim Cooks and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world get to live under a different set of rules than you and I.
I am lucky to live in an incredibly solid welfare state, where, while exceptions exist, we take care of each other (interestingly enough, The Netherlands is also one of the biggest shady tax havens in the world). A welfare state is built upon the concept of the strongest shoulders carrying the heaviest burdens, and the knowledge that Joe Billionaire is capable of paying more into the system than Jane Minimum Wage. When this system of trust breaks down – as it clearly is at risk of – our society breaks down. The fact that Tim Cook et al. have the gall to claim their 0.0002% tax rate is “fair” just rubs more salt in the wounds of any regular person who dutifully pays her or his 20-40% taxes every year.
Sadly, any meaningful change to the tax codes of the US and the EU will be blocked through the corruption and bribery Apple, Google, Facebook, and so on engage in on a daily basis. Unless we break these giants up into small companies that aren’t ‘too big to fail’, our societies will grow ever more at their mercy.
https://www.osnews.com/story/30073/after-a-tax-crackdown-apple-found-a-new-shelter-for-its-profits/
How Does Apple Avoid Taxes?
Apple’s brand halo is slipping. Silicon Valley’s well-known vanity and contempt for government are amply displayed in Apple’s tax figures. Apple, a consumer products company that sells beautifully designed gadgets, pays very little tax anywhere in the world, including the United States.
Apple AAPL +0% is playing fast and loose with consumers’ affection for its highly discretionary products, especially in Europe. It is ill-advised for any consumer products company not to pay tax where it sells products. Equally important, Apple’s tax avoidance is also testing the patience of strapped European governments that are looking for ways to get American multinationals to pay tax.
The Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations laid out Apple’s tax planning in a May 20 report. The report concluded that Apple’s tax arrangements have nothing to do with its business. Even for a jaded tax lawyer used to hokey schemes to avoid taxation, Apple’s arrangements were surprising.
Apple set up some Irish subsidiaries a mere four years after it was founded. Foreign sales, which account for 60% of Apple’s profits, are routed through these Irish subsidiaries and taxed nowhere. How is this possible, when the intellectual property that supports the value of Apple’s products is in the United States?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2013/05/28/how-does-apple-avoid-taxes/#35b4aa1120a7
Commentary: Apple Avoided $40 Billion in Taxes. Now It Wants a Gold Star?
The public relations spin doctors are working overtime at Apple this week.
The tech giant just announced that it will pay $38 billion to the U.S. Treasury in taxes brought home from overseas—and “create” some 20,000 new jobs. It pledged to invest $350 billion in the U.S. over the next five years and give employees $2,500 in restricted stock units.
That’s all spin.
What Apple really unveiled were plans to collect a massive windfall from the GOP’s corporate tax handout. This was a pay-to-play political scam at its ugliest—and the rest of us are the chumps.
Let’s start with the dollars. Apple currently holds about $252 billion in profits offshore, where it can avoid paying U.S. taxes. That’s over 90% of the company’s total cash on hand. This profit is subject to the corporate income tax as soon as it’s “repatriated” back to the U.S.
Before the recent tax code overhaul, the company would’ve paid $78.6 billion in taxes if it brought the money home, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Apple didn’t want to pay this tax, so it let the cash sit offshore for years.
In the meantime, Apple and its peers have been working furiously to tilt the tax code in their favor. Apple spent $2.3 million in the third quarter of 2017 alone lobbying. The other four big tech companies—Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet (which owns Google), and Amazon—chipped in another $14 million.
For their efforts, these titans of Silicon Valley are being rewarded handsomely. Now their offshore profits will be taxed at a one-time, 15.5% repatriation rate, also called a tax holiday. And all other corporate profits will be taxed at 21%, down from a previous nominal rate of 35%.
So that $38 billion Apple’s going to pay in taxes now? It means the company effectively dodged more than $40 billion it would’ve otherwise paid.
For context, this difference is more than double the annual cost of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers the health care costs of nine million children from low-income families. CHIP is currently in crisis, with Congress debating whether it will be included in a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
Maybe if we spent less on massive handouts to the wealthiest companies in the world, we’d have more to spend on sick children.
Yet not content to simply gloat, Apple wants to be celebrated for its heist. The company announced it would be “creating” 20,000 new jobs as a result of the tax changes. But that runs directly counter to how tax holidays actually work. A comprehensive study by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee reviewed the last time the U.S. allowed firms to bring back overseas cash at a discounted rate—in 2004. It found that the top 15 repatriating corporations actually reduced their overall U.S. workforce by 21,000 jobs.
Indeed, major corporations said over and over throughout the latest tax debate that if given a big tax cut, they would reward shareholders, not workers. True to form, they did just that—with major layoffs recently announced at Walmart, Comcast, and AT&T.
Even in Apple’s case, the job benefits aren’t so clear. As many have pointed out, the company routinely claims credit for “creating” jobs for people they don’t even employ. And as MarketWatch reports, there’s no evidence to show any of the new jobs they’re proposing now actually result from their tax windfall.
“We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release, “and the people who help make our success possible.”
With respect, Tim, no you don’t.
Spending millions in lobbying dollars to save tens of billions of dollars in taxes isn’t really a display of “responsibility” to a country or its people. It’s a greedy act done for shareholders, who have been rewarded handsomely.
https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/
In a ruling handed down this morning, Apple was given a $14.5 billion bill for back taxes by the European Commission, related to its business in Europe and Ireland. Apple’s tax situation, including the hundreds of billions in cash held offshore, has always been a hot topic for the company. But how did it land in this mess, and who does it even owe money to anyway?
The situation right now is a little unclear. This morning’s ruling was given by the European Commission, which says that both Apple and Ireland made a tax arrangement against the rules of the EU. As a result, Apple owes money to Ireland, but the country disagrees. In a statement, the Finance Minister said he “disagrees profoundly” with the EC’s ruling, and will appeal.
As you might expect, Apple is also planning on launching an appeal. CEO Tim Cook argues that because Apple complied with Irish tax authorities, there shouldn’t be any penalties applied, and Cook is confident that Apple’s case will “ultimately prevail.” Oh, and the US government is also on Apple’s side, accusing the EU in a statement last week of acting as a “supra-national tax authority.”
https://bgr.com/2016/08/30/apple-tax-evasion-ireland-eu-explained-penalty-fine/
Fact Sheet: Apple and Tax Avoidance
Apple is the most valuable public company[i] of all time with a market value of more than $800 billion.[ii] Last year, it cleared $45.7 billion[iii] in profits after taxes, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500 for the third straight year.
Apple is also particularly adept at avoiding U.S. taxes on these gargantuan profits. The major strategy Apple uses to reduce its U.S. tax bill is to artificially shift large amounts of its domestic profits into tax havens. This allows Apple to avoid paying U.S. taxes on these profits while also paying very little in foreign taxes. This is possible due to a loophole in the tax code called “deferral” that allows U.S. multinational corporations to forego taxes on profits of their foreign subsidiaries until they are paid as dividends to the U.S. parent company. Like many other multinationals, Apple exploits this loophole by using accounting maneuvers to shift its U.S. profits overseas (often only on paper) and then indefinitely deferring U.S. taxes on them.
Quick Facts: Apple’s Offshore Profits
Fact Sheet: Apple and Tax Avoidance
Apple is the most valuable public company1 of all time with a market value of more than $800 billion.
2 Last year, it cleared
$45.7 billion3 in profits after taxes, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500 for the third straight year.
Apple is also particularly adept at avoiding U.S. taxes on these gargantuan profits. The major strategy Apple uses to reduce its
U.S. tax bill is to artificially shift large amounts of its domestic profits into tax havens. This allows Apple to avoid paying U.S.
taxes on these profits while also payingvery little in foreign taxes. This is possible due to a loophole in the tax code called
“deferral” that allows U.S. multinational corporations to forego taxes on profits of their foreign subsidiaries until they are paid
as dividends to the U.S. parent company. Like many other multinationals, Apple exploits this loophole by using accounting
maneuvers to shift its U.S. profits overseas (often only on paper) and then indefinitely deferring U.S. taxes on them.
Quick Facts: Apple’s Offshore Profits
• Apple has booked $252.3 billion4 in profits offshore on which it has not paid a dime in U.S. taxes. It’s offshore sum is
greater than any other company.5 This is nearly 10 percent of the total $2.6 trillion in profits that U.S. Fortune 500
companies disclose holding offshore.
• By keeping these profits offshore, Apple is avoiding $78.5 billion in U.S. taxes.6
• A repatriation rate of 12 percent, as proposed by the GOP, would generateat least $51.6 billion in tax savings for
Apple.
Apple’s Tax Dodging Strategy
• Between 2008 and 2015, Apple earned $305 billion before taxes, and paid a foreign tax rate of only 5.8% during this
time.7
• Apple was able to achieve this low foreign rate by shifting a large portion of its profits into its three Irish subsidiaries.
8
• A Senate investigation in 2013 found that two of Apple’s Irish subsidiaries were structured so that, for tax purposes,
they weren’t “residents” of either Ireland or the U.S., allowing them to pay almost nothing to either country.9
• Last year, European authorities charged Ireland with illegally cutting a special tax deal with Applethat gave the
company a tax rate as low as 0.005%, lowering its Irish tax bill by over $14 billion.10
• Much of the profits that Apple has assigned to its Irish subsidiaries is actually held in U.S. bank accounts and
government bonds, but it can avoid U.S. taxes on these amounts because for tax purposes, the profits are under
“foreign control.”11
1 Business Insider, “Apple just broke its own record as the most valuable publicly traded company of all time” (May 8, 2017).
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-becomes-the-most-valuable-publicly-traded-company-of-all-time-2017-5 2 MarketWatch, “Apple, Inc. – Key Data” (Retrieved Oct. 26, 2017). https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Stock/AAPL
3 Fortune, “The Fortune 500's 10 Most Profitable Companies,"(June 7, 2017). http://fortune.com/2017/06/07/fortune-500-
companies-profit-apple-berkshire-hathaway/ 4 ITEP analysis of 10-K filing. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/0000320193-17-000070-index.htm 5 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), “Offshore Shell Games 2017” (October 2017), p. 2. https://itep.org/wpcontent/uploads/offshoreshellgames2017.pdf
6 ITEP analysis of 10-K filing. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019317000070/0000320193-17-000070-index.htm 7 ITEP, “The 35 Percent Corporate Tax Myth” (March 2017), p. 34. https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/35percentfullreport.pdf 8 ITEP, “Offshore Shell Games,” p. 25.
9U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Statement of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich) Before U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations on Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code – Part 2 (Apple, Inc.)” (May 21, 2013).
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=3C1C51C9-B56C-4AB5-8887-ABEF800BD076 10 European Commission, “State Aid: Ireland Gave Illegal Tax Benefits to Apple Worth Up To €13 Billion” (Aug. 30, 2016).
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm 11New York Times, “For U.S. Companies, Money ‘Offshore’ Means Manhattan” (May 21, 2013).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/for-us-companies-money-offshore-means-manhattan.html
https://itep.org/fact-sheet-apple-and-tax-avoidance/
After a tax crackdown, Apple found a new shelter for its profits
Five months after Mr. Cook’s testimony, Irish officials began to crack down on the tax structure Apple had exploited. So the iPhone maker went hunting for another place to park its profits, newly leaked records show. With help from law firms that specialize in offshore tax shelters, the company canvassed multiple jurisdictions before settling on the small island of Jersey, which typically does not tax corporate income.
Apple has accumulated more than $128 billion in profits offshore, and probably much more, that is untaxed by the United States and hardly touched by any other country. Nearly all of that was made over the past decade.
Apple is the largest company in the world, so they’re the big target – but tons of other companies engage in the same shady activities.
Every euro or dollar Apple, Google, and Facebook dodge in taxes is a euro or dollar regular folk like you and I have to pay instead. These companies make use of all the facilities and infrastructure paid for by our tax euros and dollars, but then turn around and stab society in the back by extracting vast sums of wealth from it without paying their fair share of taxes. It’s exactly this reason why the divide between rich and poor is growing exponentially, which in turn is destabilising our communities because it becomes ever clearer that the Tim Cooks and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world get to live under a different set of rules than you and I.
I am lucky to live in an incredibly solid welfare state, where, while exceptions exist, we take care of each other (interestingly enough, The Netherlands is also one of the biggest shady tax havens in the world). A welfare state is built upon the concept of the strongest shoulders carrying the heaviest burdens, and the knowledge that Joe Billionaire is capable of paying more into the system than Jane Minimum Wage. When this system of trust breaks down – as it clearly is at risk of – our society breaks down. The fact that Tim Cook et al. have the gall to claim their 0.0002% tax rate is “fair” just rubs more salt in the wounds of any regular person who dutifully pays her or his 20-40% taxes every year.
Sadly, any meaningful change to the tax codes of the US and the EU will be blocked through the corruption and bribery Apple, Google, Facebook, and so on engage in on a daily basis. Unless we break these giants up into small companies that aren’t ‘too big to fail’, our societies will grow ever more at their mercy.
https://www.osnews.com/story/30073/after-a-tax-crackdown-apple-found-a-new-shelter-for-its-profits/
How Does Apple Avoid Taxes?
Apple’s brand halo is slipping. Silicon Valley’s well-known vanity and contempt for government are amply displayed in Apple’s tax figures. Apple, a consumer products company that sells beautifully designed gadgets, pays very little tax anywhere in the world, including the United States.
Apple AAPL +0% is playing fast and loose with consumers’ affection for its highly discretionary products, especially in Europe. It is ill-advised for any consumer products company not to pay tax where it sells products. Equally important, Apple’s tax avoidance is also testing the patience of strapped European governments that are looking for ways to get American multinationals to pay tax.
The Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations laid out Apple’s tax planning in a May 20 report. The report concluded that Apple’s tax arrangements have nothing to do with its business. Even for a jaded tax lawyer used to hokey schemes to avoid taxation, Apple’s arrangements were surprising.
Apple set up some Irish subsidiaries a mere four years after it was founded. Foreign sales, which account for 60% of Apple’s profits, are routed through these Irish subsidiaries and taxed nowhere. How is this possible, when the intellectual property that supports the value of Apple’s products is in the United States?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2013/05/28/how-does-apple-avoid-taxes/#35b4aa1120a7
Commentary: Apple Avoided $40 Billion in Taxes. Now It Wants a Gold Star?
The public relations spin doctors are working overtime at Apple this week.
The tech giant just announced that it will pay $38 billion to the U.S. Treasury in taxes brought home from overseas—and “create” some 20,000 new jobs. It pledged to invest $350 billion in the U.S. over the next five years and give employees $2,500 in restricted stock units.
That’s all spin.
What Apple really unveiled were plans to collect a massive windfall from the GOP’s corporate tax handout. This was a pay-to-play political scam at its ugliest—and the rest of us are the chumps.
Let’s start with the dollars. Apple currently holds about $252 billion in profits offshore, where it can avoid paying U.S. taxes. That’s over 90% of the company’s total cash on hand. This profit is subject to the corporate income tax as soon as it’s “repatriated” back to the U.S.
Before the recent tax code overhaul, the company would’ve paid $78.6 billion in taxes if it brought the money home, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Apple didn’t want to pay this tax, so it let the cash sit offshore for years.
In the meantime, Apple and its peers have been working furiously to tilt the tax code in their favor. Apple spent $2.3 million in the third quarter of 2017 alone lobbying. The other four big tech companies—Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet (which owns Google), and Amazon—chipped in another $14 million.
For their efforts, these titans of Silicon Valley are being rewarded handsomely. Now their offshore profits will be taxed at a one-time, 15.5% repatriation rate, also called a tax holiday. And all other corporate profits will be taxed at 21%, down from a previous nominal rate of 35%.
So that $38 billion Apple’s going to pay in taxes now? It means the company effectively dodged more than $40 billion it would’ve otherwise paid.
For context, this difference is more than double the annual cost of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which covers the health care costs of nine million children from low-income families. CHIP is currently in crisis, with Congress debating whether it will be included in a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
Maybe if we spent less on massive handouts to the wealthiest companies in the world, we’d have more to spend on sick children.
Yet not content to simply gloat, Apple wants to be celebrated for its heist. The company announced it would be “creating” 20,000 new jobs as a result of the tax changes. But that runs directly counter to how tax holidays actually work. A comprehensive study by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee reviewed the last time the U.S. allowed firms to bring back overseas cash at a discounted rate—in 2004. It found that the top 15 repatriating corporations actually reduced their overall U.S. workforce by 21,000 jobs.
Indeed, major corporations said over and over throughout the latest tax debate that if given a big tax cut, they would reward shareholders, not workers. True to form, they did just that—with major layoffs recently announced at Walmart, Comcast, and AT&T.
Even in Apple’s case, the job benefits aren’t so clear. As many have pointed out, the company routinely claims credit for “creating” jobs for people they don’t even employ. And as MarketWatch reports, there’s no evidence to show any of the new jobs they’re proposing now actually result from their tax windfall.
“We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release, “and the people who help make our success possible.”
With respect, Tim, no you don’t.
Spending millions in lobbying dollars to save tens of billions of dollars in taxes isn’t really a display of “responsibility” to a country or its people. It’s a greedy act done for shareholders, who have been rewarded handsomely.
https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/
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