“It’s time to make Google, Apple and other multinational companies pay more taxes,” Angela Charlton reports for The Associated Press. “That’s the message from President Barack Obama and the leaders of the world’s leading economies at a summit ending Friday.”
“The head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development told The Associated Press that the leaders have signed up to an ambitious new tax plan at the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia,” Charlton reports. “The new rules, unveiled by the OECD and debated by G-20 finance ministers in July, would make it harder for companies to hide profits in tax havens and force them to pay tax in the countries where they make money. The leaders also agreed to an unprecedented deal to share information on individual taxpayers, despite earlier resistance by China.”
Charlton reports, “Low tax payments by major global companies — including Google, Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks — have sparked public anger in Europe recently, as governments there are struggling with high debts, low growth and austerity measures.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, by all means, make Apple and other successful companies pay for politicians’ failed policies and wasteful social experiments. Don’t make the politicians and those who voted for them accountable for wasting trillions of taxpayer monies with little or no discernible benefits. No, instead force Apple and others to pay for the politicians’ pork and mistakes instead. That way the misguided politicians can continue and maybe even ratchet up their failed boondoggles. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Makes perfect sense. Pure logic.
Charlton reports, “‘You’ve got to get the big guys to make a contribution,’ OECD chief Angel Gurria said… He said Apple borrowed billions of dollars to pay dividends instead of bringing their profits back to the United States, because they would have had to pay a third of the profits in corporate taxes.”
MacDailyNews Take: Because the U.S. corporate tax rate is way too high. Obviously.
Under the current U.S. corporate tax system, it would be very expensive to repatriate that cash. Unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up with the digital age. The tax system handicaps American corporations in relation to our foreign competitors who don’t have such constraints on the free flow of capital… Apple has always believed in the simple, not the complex. You can see it in our products and the way we conduct ourselves. It is in this spirit that we recommend a dramatic simplification of the corporate tax code. This reform should be revenue neutral, eliminate all corporate tax expenditures, lower corporate income tax rates and implement a reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows the free flow of capital back to the U.S. We make this recommendation with our eyes wide open, realizing this would likely increase Apple’s U.S. taxes. But we strongly believe such comprehensive reform would be fair to all taxpayers, would keep America globally competitive and would promote U.S. economic growth. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, May 21, 2013
Charlton reports, “‘Tax laws … seem to favor this exodus and therefore we really have to take a look at the general principles,’ and bring down the overall burden, [Gurria] said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We specifically chose to excerpt this widely-carried AP article from The Detroit News for the sake of ironic amusement.
Last autumn, Tim Worstall wrote an interesting article for The Register. In case you missed it: Google, Apple, eBay shouldn’t pay taxes – people should pay taxes.
Related articles:
G20 think tank OECD proposes blueprint for global crackdown on tax avoidance – July 19, 2013
Apple again faces scrutiny after paying no UK corporate taxes for 2012 – July 1, 2013
Bloomberg News’ awful reporting on Apple’s U.S. corporate taxes – May 30, 2013
Thomas Sowell on Apple, corporate taxes, and ‘the road to serfdom’ – May 28, 2013
Former Senator Sununu: Congress wrote the tax laws, so why blame Apple for obeying them? – May 28, 2013
Taxing Apple just taxes you – May 24, 2013
Don’t tax Apple, tax its shareholders – May 24, 2013
If Apple paid more tax, we might pay less or something – May 22, 2013
Apple CEO Tim Cook pounds another nail into the Keynesian coffin – May 22, 2013
Apple CEO Cook makes no apology for company’s tax strategy – May 22, 2013
Apple CEO Tim Cook charms Capitol Hill – May 22, 2013
Rush Limbaugh: ‘High-tech lynching: Senate attempts to crucify Apple’ – May 21, 2013
Nobody on U.S. Senate committee laid a glove on Apple CEO Tim Cook – May 21, 2013
Senator Rand Paul: Senate committee ‘should apologize to Apple for bullying one of America’s greatest success stories’ (with video) – May 21, 2013
Ireland: We have no special tax rate deal with Apple – May 21, 2013
Apple prepares for Washington onslaught: CEO Tim Cook isn’t taking any chances with senators looking to grandstand – May 21, 2013
Watch Apple CEO Tim Cook’s live testimony before U.S. Senate, starting at 9:30am EDT – May 21, 2013
U.S. Senate investigation found no evidence that Apple did anything illegal in avoiding taxes – May 20, 2013
Apple pays under 2% on overseas profits and it’s entirely legal – November 5, 2012
Google, Apple, eBay shouldn’t pay taxes – people should pay taxes – November 25, 2012
So how much did Apple really pay in taxes? – November 1, 2012
Apple’s showdown with the U.S. government over taxes on offshore cash – July 13, 2012
Apple‘s $74 billion tops list of U.S. tech companies’ overseas cash – July 9, 2012
Apple’s dividend move puts spotlight on foreign cash holdings, repatriation tax reform – March 20, 2012
Apple: Good start; and what about the overseas cash? – March 19, 2012
Apple’s foreign cash hoard piles up: $54 billion and rapidly growing – January 11, 2012
Senator John McCain eyes Apple’s $54 billion overseas cash pile – November 3, 2011
Google joins Apple in push for U.S. repatriation tax holiday – October 3, 2011
Apple lobbies Obama for tax holiday, wants to bring overseas bounty home – August 24, 2011
U.S Senate Democrat Schumer allies with Apple, other multinationals on repatriation tax talks – June 21, 2011
U.S. companies push for tax break on foreign cash – June 20, 2011
Apple, Oracle, Duke Energy, others organize lobbying blitz for tax holiday – February 17, 2011
The simple problem:
Corporations are PENALIZED by bringing money into the USA for taxation. Utter DUH Factor. The tax rate is HIGHER than if the profits had been made in the USA. That’s too stupid to comprehend.
Therefore: LOWER the foreign made profit taxes BELOW the tax rate for locally made profits. Soooo obvious. But will these dumtard politicians even DISCUSS this sane solution?
Not so far!
That’s why I say:
It’s time for another revolution to reinstate the original revolution! Kick our worst-than-King-George stupid current government to the curb. And NO, I’m NOT talking about letting the equally craptatious Republicans or Democrats do the job. Boot them both.
You don’t boot them both. You BOOT the tax loving, raising, wasteful spending party that accomplishes next to nothing and problems gone unsolved for decades. I know how it hurts to admit, for the most part, it starts with a D.
I will agree that it is that D party that goes hog wild over taxing, and over taxing.
Meanwhile: What party has SPENT the most money. Oh yeah. It begins with an R.
Which party has no scruples about screwing over the US citizens that enable the government in the first place? Which party is successfully puppetted by our Corporate Oligarchy? Which party wrecked the US Constitutional rights to free speech and personal privacy. Good golly gosh, it begins with D and it begins with R.
To hell with both of them.
Many excellent points. Not sure about R’s spending more than D’s, though. Certainly not in my D dominated part of the world …
The R’s spending is entirely real. The only reason the D’s currently get nailed for spending is because they get to pick up the pieces of the 2007 ongoing worldwide depression that occurred due to the R’s behavior and that of their pals on Wall Street.
IOW: In good times, there’s nothing like a Republican to blow the budget sky high. George W. Bush was the all time winner. If you believe otherwise, I can only feel sorry for you. I won’t be replying to ignorant arguments to the contrary either. So have fun.
Obozo the clown needs money to bomb children in Syria and help Al Qaeda take over another country, like he did in Libya.
… since his plan didn’t work out in Egypt.
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Be careful Mac Daily News. Don’t call Europe a “social experiment”. Your capitalis USA almost brought the world to its knees.