“We’ve been told by the New York Times, you know, the newswpaper of record, that Apple only paid a 9.8% tax rate last year,” Tim Worstall reports for Forbes. “As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent.”
“This really is the most gargantuan ignorance on their part,” Worstall reports. “The $3.3 billion has nothing, nothing at all, to do with the $34.2 billion: something which any accountant at all could have told them. For a full explanation of what is going on see this piece from two weeks ago.”
“To put it simply, a pressure group, the Greenlining Institute, released a report that included that calculation that led to that 9.8% tax rate. Their calculation (and as I say, all the details are in that earlier post) was based on simple ignorance of how the US corporate taxation system works,” Worstall reports. “At least I assume it was ignorance, not mendacity… What the NYT/Greenlining calculation has done is compared the profits in 2011 not with the taxes paid on profits from 2011. It has compared profits in 2011 with the taxes calculated on the basis of 2010′s profits. Which is obviously clear and present nonsense, entire argle bargle of which at least the newspaper should be ashamed.”
“Any company that grows its profits quickly will have an apparently low tax rate with this method used. Because taxes paid actually in this year are always calculated from profits made last year. So what the NYT has really reported is that Apple’s profits have been growing quickly: something which I think we already knew,” Worstall reports. “The thing the story really shows is something entirely different. Appalling, ignorant, calculation cobbled together by small time think tank. Two weeks later it is stated as simple fact in the newspaper of record. So why not issue press releases stating anything at all that you want to believe? Who knows, maybe the New York Times will find it a ‘convenient’ fact and will endorse it for you? Although you might want to note that your “fact” had better be politically acceptable to said newspaper otherwise they won’t endorse it.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: The New York Times has grown so shoddy that they can’t even employ competent hit men anymore. The New York Times is the paper of slanted publicity whores who regurgitate press releases filled with non-facts. What a joke the so-called “paper of record” (another joke) has become.
Apple should demand a prominent apology, if not sue The New York Times outright for their continuing stream of libel.
Related articles:
Apple to The New York Times: We are among the top payers of U.S. income tax – April 29, 2012
The New York Times: How Apple sidesteps billions in global taxes – April 28, 2012
The New York Times blows it, gets Apple CEO Tim Cook’s earnings spectacularly wrong – April 9, 2012
Rush Limbaugh: The New York Times has turned on Apple; they wouldn’t do this if Steve Jobs was alive – February 1, 2012
Apple CEO Tim Cook calls New York Times supplier report ‘patently false and offensive’ – January 27, 2012
Why did The New York Times revise their ‘iPad modest changes’ article and neglect to inform their readers? – March 8, 2012
The New York Times continues idiotic vendetta, claims Apple’s new iPad only offers ‘modest changes’ (UPDATED) – March 7, 2012
Churnalism, http://churnalism.com/faq/
Libtards are the scum of the earth. NY Slimes is their mouthpiece.
November 2012, Landslide loss for Maobamanidagene, despite all of the Marxist propaganda being spewed daily from the NY Slimes………
seriously, a libel charge is precisely how should respond to this newspaper that’s devolved into yet another National Enquirer.
lol, they should delete their app too. play hardball with those creeps.
You know, all this bad press would not have happened if Apple contributed generously to the hacks in Washington, DC.
We never hear about the tax rate that Goldman-Sacks or JP Morgan pay and they are a couple of the biggest campaign contributors to both parties.
We need to be skeptical about anything and everything reported by the corporate “news” media, plain and simple.
The NYT is clearly on a mission to knock Apple down.
It’s Sad.
How the mighty have fallen.
They are quickly closing in on The Enquirer.
Their strategy is working – AAPL’s down $10 this morning.
Obviously, Apple has historically been a fave target by TechTard journalists for decades. Nothing new there.
But is this a deliberate FUD attack, or instead has the New York Tards turned into a nest of plain old stupid? Certainly the effect is to prove the latter. In any case, the NYT is in self-destruction mode.
NYT is a liberal rag and has been as long as I can remember. Their bias in these areas will just slap you down unless you are left leaning. I always enjoy articles in the WSJ talking about their decline. I like NYT’s strategy, I like it a lot.
It is a stretch to call the Times a “liberal rag” when they provided the platform for Judith Miller to spread the “aluminum tubes” propaganda that helped Bush whip the country into a frenzy and invade Iraq.
Whether or not the US should have invaded Iraq or not, there’s simply zero doubt that they had weapons of mass destruction. They used them on their own people and during the Iran Iraq war.
No one else was doing anything, or really even interested in doing anything to contain Saddam Hussein. Maybe there was a better way to handle him, but it would have taken more cooperation from other world powers, including Europe. And we already know that many European countries were violating the sanctions against Iraq and illegally trading with him for oil.
It’s an ugly situation, and sure, blame it all on Bush, but Europe has a lot of blame here. They are the ones who colonized much of the Middle East and Africa and created much of the mess that the world is in today, and are hardly doing anything to undo all the damage they caused. The US is not perfect, but it has at least acted honorably with all the power it has. It does not go around colonizing and enslaving millions of people around the world.
Clearly you and I have a completely different take on what it means to act honorably and what constitutes a threat to the US.
My point was that the NYT “catapulted the propaganda” espoused by neoconservatives when it came to ginning up the war with Iraq.
While I’m in agreement that the NYT piece is flawed your comment is too. Yes Iraq used WMD (old mustard gas that we likely supplied) during their war with Iran. Yes SH turned those weapons on the Kurds.
The Kurds are only technically his own people. Made so by a treaty pushed by the US at the end of WWII that has led to strife throughout the region. Does any of that prove he had a modern WMD program with designs to threaten the West, hardly.
The NYT was very much involved in the drumbeat to go to war. Just because you dislike the rag doesn’t mean your free to make up facts. Join the game of lying and calling it facts and you’re no better than them.
+1
Arnold Sniffel = Commie
Maxine,
Is calling me names, e.g., “Commie” the best you can do?!
Whatever.
Arnold Sniffel,
The shoe obviously fits, so wear it comrade!
You name-callers clearly don’t remember the late ’60s. The proper way to attack folks residing to the left of Curtis LeMay is by calling them “Commie-pinko-fags”. Got it?
And who can forget “Kill a Commie for Christ”? Now, that was top-notch.
No more lawsuits!!!!! Simply have a press release that points out how incompetent the NYTimes is.
Spending money on attorneys in lawsuits is worse that acquiring a dead walking company like Rim.
How sad when a once respected bulwark of journalistic ethics resorts to cutting it’s own credibility throat by a patently inaccurate report. Buried in the article are references to other
well known corporations that may have shoddy accounting practices that may merit criticism. The inclusion of Apple in the point position was a veiled attempt to gather attention
by cashing in on the attention any article about Apple generates these days. The actual merits of the writing and the authors are so refutable and flimsy as to relegate the
paper to bottom of birdcage status.
I learned a new word today; “mendacity.”
Me too. I thought it had something to do with Eva Mendes. 😉
I no longer click on articles from the New York Times and I’ve removed the NewYork Times app from my iPad and iPhone.
The final straw for me was when they asked the Obama Administration to review and “approve” their Wikileaks coverage. Imagine where we’d be if Woodward and Bernstein had to submit their Watergate reporting to the Nixon Administration for review and approval…
This headline completely blows it, they suggest Apple Apple is committing a $2B crime. http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/morning_call/2012/04/apple-evades-2b-in-taxes.html
I think they’re going to get sued.
Wow, I didn’t realize that is where the NYTs got $3.3B. I couldn’t actually source it from the Sullivan paper, so I figure they came up with it from Apple’s 10K. I didn’t realize they got it from some other source.
The New York Times… the real ‘Faux News’!
A pox on both their houses.
If they got this wrong, what about other articles, how much can you rely on anything they print is correct?
Although you might want to note that your “fact” had better be politically acceptable to said newspaper otherwise they won’t endorse it.
Great, another “Shot By Both Sides” moment for US citizens. Stupid on the LEFT (NYTards) and stupid on the RIGHT (FuxNews).
What is a sane citizen to do? Is it indeed ignorance? Or is it deliberate lies? I personally don’t care. I simply want the wrong and deceitful shot out of the sky so we can get on with the business of living kind, caring and intelligent lives.
You wouldn’t know what a sane citizen should do Der-ick!!
There! That difficult question has been answered. The anonymous coward nick of the day for my own personal STALKER is, *drum roll*, Marsha.
Now that wasn’t so hard. But then there’s always TOMORROW! Can you keep it up? Can you come up with new anonymous coward nick every single day? Will it over-tax your little ditto-head mind? Might your decomposing brain spontaneously combust in a flash of ignited methane gas? On the future can tell…
[Yeah, I really do get my jollies out of feeding this troll. A guilty pleasure. I hope I at least provide entertainment value for all other readers]. 😉
When previously great newspapers such as the NYT start presenting Mike Daisey and the Greenlining Institute as their sources, you know the complete demise of traditional media can’t be far away. The really sad thing is there’s no-one to take their place. Reliable, authoritative news is dead, so the NYT is dead – and worse, it was self-inflicted.