“For-profit companies don’t typically downplay the value of their assets,” Catherine Ho writes for The San Francisco Chronicle. “But when it comes to paying property taxes, some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies are going head to head with officials to try to prove that some of the equipment and machinery they used to become global titans are actually worth a lot less than what county tax assessors say.”
“In the Bay Area, Genentech and Apple are particularly aggressive in opposing tax assessors,” Ho writes. “Both companies are leading years-long efforts to recoup tens of millions of dollars they say they’ve overpaid in taxes on buildings, land, lab equipment, computers and other items.”
“Each company has far more appeals contesting assessors’ valuation of their property — and are disputing far greater amounts of property — than any other company in the counties in which they are based,” Ho writes. “In Santa Clara County, Apple is the leading appealer of tax assessments, with 489 open cases dating back to 2004, disputing $8.5 billion in property value, according to the assessor’s office. Apple is largest taxpayer in the county, paying $56 million in tax year 2017-18.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use it[s] resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. ― Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
In relation to MDNs take and the old MF quote do they know what Apple is claiming their new Spaceship Campus is valued at for tax assessment? Apple lover as I am I am still objective enough to be embarrassed at thier claim. It’s for others to question whether it passes the MF test stated above in a legal sense but I know what my feeling is from a moral one.