Rand Paul: "Apologize and submit to your Corporate Overlords"

[Nbadan]

:lol to all the morons who think this jackass is running on principle...


http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/5898/54961119.jpg

Rand Paul demands Congress ‘apologize’ to Apple for tax avoidance hearing

Last edited Tue May 21, 2013, 04:45 PM USA/ET - Edit history (2)
Source: Raw Story




Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday lashed out at fellow members of Congress for looking into how technology giant Apple is able to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report on Monday detailing how Apple had used a network of offshore shell companies in recent year to avoid paying taxes.

At a committee hearing on Tuesday, Paul was livid that Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked to testify.

“I’m offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one America’s greatest success stories,” the Kentucky Republican told the committee. “Tell me what Apple has done that is illegal?”


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/21/rand-paul-demands-congress-apologize-to-apple-for-tax-avoidance-hearing/

Bill Black: Senate questions CEO Tim Cook how the company earned $30 billion in "international" profits while paying zero taxes.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10229

[boutons_deux]

Fuck Rand Paul and all the KY-jelly brains that elect him.

[SA210]

Yet Wall Street and torturers runs free with the current Prez :lol

I like some things that Rand does, but he is not his father, far from it, and I have always said this. But I :lol at ppl hating on him for these words when the current fraudulent Prez is the definition of a corporate hack and Wall Street sellout. lol

[boutons_deux]

"with the current Prez"

yep, but it wudda been a lot worse with Bishop Gecko who said he was going to kill all financial regulation and "start over"

[Spurminator]

So what was the point of the hearing? It was theater. If the congressmen have a problem with the tax code that allows Apple to get away with stuff like this, they need to change the code.

But they'll never do that, because this is a much easier way of making the people feel like Congress is working for them. Everybody wins!

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

So what was the point of the hearing? It was theater. If the congressmen have a problem with the tax code that allows Apple to get away with stuff like this, they need to change the code.

Yeah this is what I thought. Apple didn't do anything illegal, they followed the tax code that gives multinational corporations blow jobs.

[boutons_deux]

The Corporate Tax DodgeWHILE a Senate report detailing Apple’s aggressive tax sheltering of billions of dollars of overseas income grabbed headlines (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/apple-avoided-billions-in-taxes-congressional-panel-says.html?pagewanted=all) this week, little notice was paid to a surreptitious thrust at tax minimization that was announced at nearly the same moment.

In a news release, the American drug maker Actavis announced that it would spend $5 billion to acquire Warner Chilcott, an Irish pharmaceuticals company less than half its size.

Buried in the fifth paragraph of the release was the curious tidbit that the new company would be incorporated in Ireland, even though the far larger acquirer was based in Parsippany, N.J.

The reason? By escaping American shores, Actavis expects to reduce its effective tax rate from about 28 percent to 17 percent, a potential savings of tens of millions of dollars per year for the company and a still larger hit to the United States Treasury.

Actavis is hardly alone in fleeing to lower-tax countries. For example, Eaton Corporation (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/eaton_corporation/index.html), a diversified power management company based for nearly a century in Cleveland, also became an “Irish company” when it acquired (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/eaton-corporation-to-buy-cooper-industries-for-11-8-billion/?ref=eatoncorporation) Cooper Industries last year.

Here’s the point: As muddled and broken as the individual income tax system may be, the rules under which the government collects corporate levies are far more loophole-ridden (http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrenzel/2013/04/04/the-tax-code-is-a-hopeless-complex-economy-suffocating-mess/) and counterproductive.

That’s not entirely Washington’s fault. Unlike individuals, multinational corporations can shuttle profits — and sometimes even their headquarters — around the globe in search of the jurisdiction willing to cut them the best deal on taxes (and often other economic incentives).

Much of this occurs under the guise of “transfer pricing (http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroom/speeches/speech/opening-statement-of-sen-carl-levin-offshore-profit-shifting-and-the-us-tax-code-part-2-apple-inc),” the terms under which one subsidiary of a multinational sells products to another subsidiary. The goal is to generate as high a share of profit as possible in the lowest-taxed jurisdictions.
A study by the Congressional Research Service found that subsidiaries of United States corporations operating in the top five tax havens (the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda, Switzerland and Luxembourg) generated 43 percent of their foreign profits in those countries in 2008, but had only 4 percent of their foreign employees and 7 percent of their foreign investment located there.

All in all, it is a race to the bottom on the part of revenue-starved governments eager to attract (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/global/ireland-defends-attractive-tax-rates.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&) even a relatively small number of new jobs.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/05/23/the-corporate-tax-dodge/

Ireland's bankers fucked up Ireland, on a par with Iceland and Spain, worse than US bankers fucked up USA, and Irish taxpayers footed, are footing the bill.

[Th'Pusher]

Yeah this is what I thought. Apple didn't do anything illegal, they followed the tax code that gives multinational corporations blow jobs.
Putting the blame squarely on the legislature is a little disingenuous IMO. The reason the tax code is so complex is because corporate lobbyist lobby congress to make it that way and of course legislators need money to win their next election and so on...there is zero talk about addressing the root of the problem - the fact that legislators need $ to win their next election. Eliminate that and you eliminate a ton of bullshit.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Putting the blame squarely on the legislature is a little disingenuous IMO. The reason the tax code is so complex is because corporate lobbyist lobby congress to make it that way and of course legislators need money to win their next election and so on...there is zero talk about addressing the root of the problem - the fact that legislators need $ to win their next election. Eliminate that and you eliminate a ton of bullshit.
I wasn't putting the blame squarely on congress. I was agreeing that congress questioning Apple for following the corporate tax code they created is sanctimonious bullshit.

[Spurminator]

Putting the blame squarely on the legislature is a little disingenuous IMO. The reason the tax code is so complex is because corporate lobbyist lobby congress to make it that way and of course legislators need money to win their next election and so on...there is zero talk about addressing the root of the problem - the fact that legislators need $ to win their next election. Eliminate that and you eliminate a ton of bullshit.

Well, unfortunately, the only ones who can address that problem are the ones who benefit from the problem.

[tlongII]

All large corporations do this. It's legal. A corporation's first priority is to deliver value to its shareholders. If you want it to change you need to change the tax code as people have said earlier. Of course the libtards would rather just blame the "evil" corporations.

[boutons_deux]

"the only ones who can address that problem are the ones who benefit from the problem."

the only ones who can fix the problem are the ones who are owned and financed by the beneficiaries of the problem, which problem for the 99% equals "solution" for the 1%.

so many silly naive jerks in here who believe we can elect enough Elizabeth Warren-types to both chambers to fix the problem. iow, America is fucked and unfuckable.

[boutons_deux]

"with the current Prez"

yep, but it wudda been a lot worse with Bishop Gecko who said he was going to kill all financial regulation and "start over"

[Clipper Nation]

"with the current Prez"

yep, but it wudda been a lot worse with Bishop Gecko who said he was going to kill all financial regulation and "start over"



I see no difference between Barry's kowtowing to corporatism and the GOP's, tbh....

[baseline bum]

Yet Wall Street and torturers runs free with the current Prez :lol

I like some things that Rand does, but he is not his father, far from it, and I have always said this. But I :lol at ppl hating on him for these words when the current fraudulent Prez is the definition of a corporate hack and Wall Street sellout. lol

LOL sounding exactly like an Obama fanboy who deflects any legit complaint about President Porch Monkey onto Bush.

[SA210]

LOL sounding exactly like an Obama fanboy who deflects any legit complaint about President Porch Monkey onto Bush.


Nah, just calling out the hypocrisy. Now, stfu bitch. After you pussied out, don't address me anymore.

[baseline bum]

Nah, just calling out the hypocrisy. Now, stfu bitch. After you pussied out, don't address me anymore.

Real question son: are you one of those fundamentalist jeebotards who believes in prayer instead of vaccinating your children? Like these guys?

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1100230/thumbs/s-CATHERINE-HERBERT-SCHAIBLE-large.jpg

[Nbadan]

I meant I-Overlords....it was late.

[boutons_deux]

I see no difference between Barry's kowtowing to corporatism and the GOP's, tbh....

yes, both parties are owned by 1% / corporate / financical sector, but the Repugs push hard for fucking the 99%, while the dickless, passive, leaderless Dems let it happen.

[Galileo]

Rand Paul is pro-technology. The Unabomber is anti-technology.