“Apple isn’t taking any chances with senators looking to embarrass CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday at a hearing on the tech giant’s offshore $100 billion stash,” Anna Palmer reports for Politico. “Monday night lawmakers were already gearing up, unveiling a report that alleges Apple avoided paying taxes on $44 billion in offshore, taxable income.”
“A Senate panel says Apple did not break the law but did find a new way to limit its tax burden — three of its subsidiaries in Ireland do not pay income taxes to any country,” Palmer reports. “To deal with the nasty optics, Apple has turned to a top Washington law firm for help, O’Melveny & Myers – veterans at trying to keep big companies out of trouble, like Enron, Ford and Goldman Sachs.”
“Firms like O’Melveny & Myers work closely with committee investigators to track down what CEOs can expect to face. And they try to limit the scope of the investigation before the hearing even takes place,” Palmer reports. “Apple has also sent its own hired guns to Capitol Hill for recon duty. Their mission: find out the planned line of questioning and expose any surprises senators plan to air. Meanwhile, Cook and two other top execs are doing their homework in Apple’s Washington office, which has become ground zero for the company’s preparations.”
Read more in the full article here.
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We might note for the benefit of the Tim Cook haters around here that the oft-repeated claim that “every time Cook speaks the stock drops” is confronted by today’s stock price behavior: While Tim was talking the stock was up by over $7. When he recessed from the hearing the stock dropped back and is now climbing out of negative territory.
Here we go with Part 3 with Levin shoving ‘SHIFTED REVENUES’ into everyone’s faces, as if Apple owed a penny of its foreign profits to the US government. It does NOT. Neither does any other company.
IOW: Senator Carl Levin is ranting on and on that foreign profit taxes are OWED to the US government. He is 100% wasting everyone’s time. So are the puppet commentators he’s blethering with at the moment. Levin is a DIRE SOCIALIST. This is the garbage that ruins the reputation of what SHOULD be actual, factual PROGRESSIVE government / politics.
Concept: A physical arena with weapons of choice that battles extremist liberals (IOW Karl Levin) with extremist neo-conservatives (take your pick of the ‘Tea Party’ tards). I’d be in the bleachers cheering on BOTH sides to kill each other off. No more lunatics in my government, ever!
Monday night Senator Levin said, “The secret to Apple’s business success isn’t in the aluminum and the steel and the glass of an iPhone. The genius is the ideas that bring those elements together in an elegant package. That intangible genius is intellectual property… nurtured and developed here in the United States.”
Well, Senator Law Maker, how is the good ol’ US Patent system protecting Apple’s intellectual property these days?
If I were Tim Cook, I’d run a spreadsheet to compare the $7B in US corporate income tax expected this year against the cost of moving Cupertino R&D, lock, stock and barrel (every employee and family) to a more friendly country.
I’ll wager that it would be cheaper for Apple to buy everyone’s US homes and move all their kit to Ireland than to pay that tax. And give Senator Levin a gesture common throughout the world.
But Tim said Apple is proud to be an American company.
Still, Tim?