Ireland + EU pushing it in raw apple pie

[TDMVPDPOY]

http://www.theage.com.au/business/th...30-gr528m.html

they won a court case wanting apple to pay EU$10-20b in unpaid taxes, most of it is the EU pushing IRELAND to do something or they wont get a slice of the pie EU funds/trade

australia govt is also in the process of taking them to court also for unpaid taxes on apple products sold in australia...

is america also going to chase them for unpaid taxes?

[diego]

i'll save cosmic cowboy the work of posting this:

What do you say in response to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz’s comments on Bloomberg [television], where he called Apple’s profit reporting in Ireland a “fraud”?

I didn’t hear it. But if anybody said that, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Let me explain what goes on with our international taxes. The money that’s in Ireland that he’s probably referring to is money that is subject to U.S. taxes. The tax law right now says we can keep that in Ireland or we can bring it back. And when we bring it back, we will pay 35 percent federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we’re in, which is about 5 percent, so think of it as 40 percent. We’ve said at 40 percent, we’re not going to bring it back until there’s a fair rate. There’s no debate about it. Is that legal to do or not legal to do? It is legal to do. It is the current tax law. It’s not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic. It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.

First off, notice stiglitz says its a fraud, not unpatriotic, yet cook twists it to his convenience. next quote:

In the meantime, it’s important to look at what we do pay. Our marginal rate, our effective rate in the U.S. is over 30 percent. We are the largest taxpayer in the United States. And so we’re not a tax dodger. We pay our share and then some. We don’t have these big loopholes that other people talk about. The only kind of major tax credit that we get is the R&D tax credit, which is available to all companies in the United States. That’s important to know. The second thing I would point out is we have money internationally because we have two-thirds of our business there. So we earn money internationally. We didn’t look for a tax haven or something to put it somewhere. We sell a lot of product everywhere. And we want to bring it back, and we’ve been very honest and straightforward about that.

he cant have it both ways. for the us gov, its 2/3 international, for the EU its US earnings. you are extremely naive if you dont think this tax dodging is what they have an army of lawyers and accountants for.
and its ludicrous to think its ok for them to wait for a "fair rate". why doesnt apple let app store customers pay when they feel there is a fair rate? taxes are on profits, not research and development. apple likes to present itself as a US company but is legally irish. I could care less if its patriotic or not, but it sure is made.

us citizens pay us taxes regardless of where they live, but us corporations dont. they can then spend that money on superpacs (thanks citizens united), while us citizens spend it on the right to choose between jr. vs jr. (i honestly thought bush v gore would be the worst candidates ever, speaking of naive...) That should be an obvious problem regardless of your political inclination.

[ElNono]

us citizens pay us taxes regardless of where they live, but us corporations dont. they can then spend that money on superpacs (thanks citizens united), while us citizens spend it on the right to choose between jr. vs jr. (i honestly thought bush v gore would be the worst candidates ever, speaking of naive...) That should be an obvious problem regardless of your political inclination.

This is the boondoggle I never understood. On one hand, for speech, corporations = citizens. But for tax purposes, that no longer applies? I know for a fact that if you're a citizen living in another country, and earning your money in another country, you're still required to file taxes with the US government, including your international income and pay the corresponding taxes. Some people even renounce US citizenship to forgo having to do that. How are they not using a loophole?

[Th'Pusher]

This is the boondoggle I never understood. On one hand, for speech, corporations = citizens. But for tax purposes, that no longer applies? I know for a fact that if you're a citizen living in another country, and earning your money in another country, you're still required to file taxes with the US government, including your international income and pay the corresponding taxes. Some people even renounce US citizenship to forgo having to do that. How are they not using a loophole?

I think the answer is they are using a loophole, it just happens to be written into the law. The tax only applies if it is repatriated, which is a ridiculous concept considering in reality, it is nothing more than a number on a balance sheet. Theoretically, they would not be able to reinvest that money back into US operations, but with a company like Apple, there is other money for that if that's how they choose to spend.

[boutons_deux]

"corporations = citizens. But for tax purposes, that no longer applies?"

BigCorp ain't a person, and money ain't speech. People always die, BigCorp can last forever.

BigCorp can declare bankruptcy and walk away from debt, Repug/BigFinance law says students can't.

When the VRWC puts their puppets on SCOTUS, we get such perversions, plus "weaponizing" of the 1st, 2nd Amendments.

That's irrefutable evidence that America is a corporatocracy, not a democracy. BigCorp corrupts govt, and gets the rulings, laws, regulations it pays for, no matter how perverse, weird, destructive.

[CosmicCowboy]

This is the boondoggle I never understood. On one hand, for speech, corporations = citizens. But for tax purposes, that no longer applies? I know for a fact that if you're a citizen living in another country, and earning your money in another country, you're still required to file taxes with the US government, including your international income and pay the corresponding taxes. Some people even renounce US citizenship to forgo having to do that. How are they not using a loophole?

FYI, there is an inflation indexed personal exclusion on foreign income that was about $100,000 in 2016, plus all living expenses are deductible. You just file a form 2555.

[ElNono]

FYI, there is an inflation indexed personal exclusion on foreign income that was about $100,000 in 2016, plus all living expenses are deductible. You just file a form 2555.

Yeah, that's for personal. What I don't get is why there's no such thing as part of a schedule K-1 or similar for overseas earnings. Corps are citizens too, right? Or so we've been told...

Or does a company choosing to do an inversion can change their "nationality" at will? If that's the case, then suddenly they have more rights than citizens...

[boutons_deux]

FYI, there is an inflation indexed personal exclusion on foreign income that was about $100,000 in 2016, plus all living expenses are deductible. You just file a form 2555.

I'm pretty sure exclusion is for earned income of ex-patriots, while world-wide unearned income for ex-patriots is fully taxable without exclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreig...come_exclusion

The exclusion used to be $60K or $70K in the 1970s, so now it should over $300K.

[boutons_deux]

Yesterday, Outraged by Apple’s Tax Dodge. Today, by Its Tax Bill.

American lawmakers have for years been assailing companies for dodging taxes with overseas maneuvers.

But now that theEuropean Union has done something about it by trying to wrest billions of dollars from Apple, those officials have offered a response viewed by many as rife with hypocrisy: collective outrage.

Apple — a company long accused of being overly creative at avoiding taxes — now has the federal government standing up for it after the European Union’s executive commission ordered Ireland on Tuesday to collect $14.5 billion in taxes from the company.

The tax money that the European Union extracts from Apple should be going to the United States Treasury, not that they have figured out how to make that happen.

“It’s remarkable to think that the administration has been flying over to Brussels on taxpayers’ dollars to lobby the European Union against collecting taxes owed in Europe when they’re not collecting the taxes owed here,” said Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition. “It’s terribly ironic.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/bu...-tax-bill.html

What a farce the USA is. ing politicians, ing American at every turn.