Wow, the comments in this otherwise rational forum are astounding. Does no one really understand the purposes of taxation? Or are you all too self-inflated to realize that you are part of a public collective?
Don't you find it strange that things like roads to transport your products, education to give knowledge to your employees (and consumers!), and emergency services to ensure the safety and well-being of the public are all things we rely on to keep living our individual lives?
To replace these services with private entities would take their control out of the hands of democracy and into selected special interests.<p>I would say that HN readers and contributors are among the smartest people on the web; they are the intellectuals. So
please pardon my "rantiness" when I say that it is the responsibility of intellectuals to facilitate growth in their communities. And in this cyber-cosmopolitan age it becomes important to understand where the most efficient contributions to growth are going to take place. After all, life is infinitely finite. When you're 6 feet under the only things that survive are your genetic progeny and your intellectual progeny. Favouring conservative taxation in favour of purported "individualism" is not only selfish, but highly inefficient. Charities and government subsidies do not fill the voids required by collective resource allocation. To be more concrete: you can't build a socioeconomic infrastructure on top of capitalism. You have to do it the other way around.
Philanthropy isn't as widespread in Europe as it is in North America. That's because European taxation models are such that there is a "safety net" (one which is akin to our emergency response system, but more robust and covering more edge-cases).<p>Pardon my frustrated response, but I just don't think HN is on the same page when it comes to the benefits of democratic "socialism".
There have been a lot of articles recently about how this or that corporation pays their taxes. They are always shallow analyses, just info-tainment.<p>There is a broader question of how the US should structure corporate taxes, but demonizing individual corporations for how they follow the crazy rules is a silly thing. Perhaps useful to further the conversation, but not really a reflection on ethics.
The amount they do pay is fairly irrelevant, it's the equivilent to a single person saying "I know I owe taxes, but hey I've already paid a lot, so..."<p>The more relevant part of their statement is "Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules." That's their <i>actual</i> response, the rest is just decoration.<p>I also like the irony (though to be fair you can see why they said it) of saying "We have contributed to many charitable causes but have never sought publicity for doing so"... in a press release.
The NYT 'attacks' on Apple recently have annoyed me. Firstly the Foxconn story. All the attention was focussed on Apple and the other companies using these factories didn't get any bad publicity. If the NYT actually cared about what was going on there they would have exposed all the companies with issues in China.<p>Same applies here. Paying less tax in this way is something every multi-national company does and yet the NYT has once again decided to focus on Apple. Let me be clear, I'm not an Apple 'fanboy'. I think if the NYT actually cared about these 'issues' they would expose all the bad actors. They're just trying to get page views.<p>And honestly, this is not even a story. Apple are acting within the law, trying to maximise their profits. They sell their products worldwide and can take advantage of that to pay less tax.
TLDR seems to be: we may pay a much lower tax on profits than most individuals do on income, but at least we have so much profit that we still pay a lot. Also, it's technically legal, so it must be ethical. And we donate to charity and stuff, so whatever.<p>Funny that they recognize in the response that they are primarily an US-based company, with US labour educated in the country, but instead want to pay Irish taxes. Or maybe they <i>do</i> get 30% of their worldwide profits from Ireland, who knows...
This is crazy, but I actually have a comment about Apple's response, not a political rant on the general idea of taxation.<p>Apple includes "income taxes withheld on employee stock gains" in "Apple's" tax payments. But aren't these employees' income tax, not Apple's? Is this another instance of creative accounting?<p>Sure, Apple can claim that they helped create that income, just like they helped create the job. But I'm talking specifically about their claim that they are a "top payer of U.S. income tax" because of their employees' tax obligations.
I'm not sure why so many people seem to think this is such a big deal. It happens everywhere around the world. Companies like Shell and bands like U2 do the same. It's called tax avoidance and it's not illegal and personally I wouldn't even call it immoral or unethical. Business has little to do with morals or ethics as far as I'm concerned. It's the task of the lawmakers to decide the borders of morality / ethics and make clear laws and business just has to abide by the laws.<p>Personally I strive to pay as little tax as possible as well. I can't blame businesses for trying the same.
Favourite part of the article: how NYT describes each apple that the tax subsidiaries are named after.<p>"Braeburn is a variety of apple that is simultaneously sweet and tart."<p>"Baldwin apples are known for their hardiness while traveling."
The idea of taxing corporations on the very arbitrary definition of profit is a big issue imo. It would be more accurate to tax when money changes hands going in or out, not as a sales tax but a resource tax. This approach may decrease the need for the 50k page definition of profit vs investment. I have not given t his much thought but taxing the end state seems wishful thinking, because anyone would decrease there end state as much as possible before getting there?
<i>In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.</i><p>"among the top payers" in absolute terms, right? I don't think that's the part that is being debated - the amount paid by Apple relative to total earnings is what is being discussed.
Of course they'll say they comply with the letter of the law. That is the 'highest ethical standard' any large public corporation will claim. If we as Americans believe Apple, however noble, is evading the spirit of the law, we need to make the letter of the law more specific.
3+billion is a huge amount of money the last time I checked. The fact is Apple derives most of its revenue abroad, and it's unfair to subject their overseas earnings to US taxes.
Summary:<p>* We make a lot of low-paying jobs for young people, hocking our foreign-made goods to Americans in every state.<p>* We may or may not create jobs as a bi-product of our app store, where developers can try to scrape in an environment where people will turn to piracy because $0.99 is <i>too expensive</i> for an app.<p>* We pay more in taxes than any of you plebs.<p>(The last one is the Adam Carolla attitude: "I pay a large absolute value in taxes, so you should thank me, regardless of any considerations of relative value or overall rates")