Let me remind you of what you had said: "Apple is in Ireland because the tax rate is 2% (compared to 35%) here." (sic). The tax rate in Ireland is not 2%. You were wrong.
You're right, I should have said, THEIR (tax rate) instead of THE. Regardless of wording, it doesn't change a single thing. Apple still only pays 2% in Ireland. Whether Ireland likes it or not, they're not getting what they should either, but I'm sure it's a matter of,
we'll take our business elsewhere if you won't give us what we want and someone decided they'd rather have Apple there at 2% than not at all. The problem is Apple's ability to move around like that and that is our fault for letting them do it. If they could not form a subsidiary under U.S. law, they would not be in Ireland in the first place. But our government is run by the corporations FOR the corporations so they can pretty much do anything they want. Very few large corporations actually pay 35% here so the notion of getting rid of that rate is largely just for show anyway. Pointing out our tax rate is the problem is similarly misdirection at best since large corporations don't generally pay it anyway.
That is the American way these days. It's why the right is working so hard to dismantle the last vestiges of unions wherever it can, to undo all the progressive positive changes made in the past century. They will not be happy until there's the 1% and the peasants and nothing in-between. It's easier to control a population that can't even afford to eat properly, after all.
In your post to someone else above, you talk about how it'd be nice if stupid people could earn a middle class wage, but of course they're all replaceable and how dare someone working in a restaurant ask for more than $7.25 (with waiters/waitresses earning substantially less since they are expected to make their money from tips and if a customer doesn't leave a proper tip, too bad). Of course the same people at a high-end restaurant probably make more money in a night than I make in a week. It's disproportionate to the actual work and skill involved all around. In the end, it simply comes down to what the 1% want to spend. Their profits go through the roof and unless they're forced to, they will not spread it around at all. They'll pay through the nose for the top-end management, but everyone else can expect nothing for increased productivity and hard work. It was the American way in the 19th Century and despite the progress made during the 20th Century, we are quickly regressing back to the Middle Ages thanks to unlimited spending from the top to bribe...ahem...lobby their way back in time.
Apple may pay what amounts to about 2% at least sometime, but there are conflicting claims as to why. Your thesis was that Apple established its Irish subs to take advantage of the 2% tax rate, a rate which appears nowhere in Irish law, as you yourself finally acknowledge is the case.
Oh come on. You're playing word games now. I'm not out to win a debate or a prize here. I'm just trying to keep people like you honest. Let's go with the 12% figure instead. It' still 23% less than the USA and one of the lowest in all of Europe and now that the religious violence crap has largely abated over there, Ireland looks like a pretty good base to work out of for Europe. Apple didn't have to know about iPods back in 1980. They wanted to sell Apple computers back then. Besides, I'm talking about Apple today, not in 1980, which you brought up. It doesn't even matter if taxes were the reason they created Apple Ireland. What are they using it for now? A tax shelter. Period.
There is no creative accounting.
I guess that depends on your idea of creative. Creating subsidiaries inside of subsidiaries like AOI to pay 0% taxes sounds creative to me. But you call it "vanilla" and that's a load of crap (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/29/apple-ireland-cork-cathy-kearney ). Someone also made a deal for a ~2% tax rate. I don't care if if you want to call that creative or not, they're getting a hell of a deal.
AOI pays zero tax in Ireland because that is what Irish law provides.
By provides, you mean they found a loophole in Irish law that lets them do what they do. That's not creative, though. It's pure vanilla (whatever the frack that means in regards to avoiding taxes that are supposed to be paid by law). Really, you're doing nothing but making excuses for why Apple (and I don't mean Apple Ireland since Apple controls both Apple Ireland and by extension, AOI) avoids paying taxes. The bottom line is that Apple is a U.S. company, not an Irish one and they should be paying U.S. taxes. They hide their money overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes. No one (but you it seems) disputes this. You make excuses for it and because it's legal, it's somehow OK. And that tells me all I need to know about your own ethical outlook on life. If it's legal, do it. If it's legal to thieve, do it. If they don't like thievery, they should change the law. That's your answer for everything financial. There's no moral qualms. There's no ethical or patriotic integrity to consider. If you can get away with it, do it.
Just admit that much and I'll leave the discussion right now. Because my whole point here is that morality and ethical integrity should trump legality in people's lives. Just because you
can get away with something (e.g. create a designer drug that isn't illegal yet), that doesn't mean you
should. And it's precisely this grey area of ethical behavior that has developed as the country has become more and more secular that bothers me. I don't need God to tell me right and wrong, but it's becoming apparent that most of the population apparently does or at least, rather they are inherently evil to begin with and without a threat of eternal damnation (and many with it even so) will do whatever they want to do...anarchy if we let it happen.
Perhaps you'd like to advise the Irish government on how they can get more tax revenue by changing their laws to make subs like AOI subject to a 35% tax in Ireland. I would have thought that establishing a higher tax rate on foreign-managed corporations in Ireland might actually have occurred to the Irish and that they felt in was in the overall long-term interests of Ireland to keep a low to non-existent tax rate in order to attract more companies, more jobs, and more economic activity. But I could be all wet and the Irish would just be on tenterhooks awaiting the pearls of wisdom to fall from the lips of noted international tax expert Dr. VanMagnum.
I heard your rejection of the very concept of a dividend, citing the maxim, "profits are profits", but it turns out the grown-ups of the world don't agree and think whether or not a dividend has been paid matters.
Your comments are always under the table insults and attempts to make what is legal sound like it's ethical when it so obviously is not ethical in the slightest to anyone with a conscience in them. You have
zero integrity. You are part of the problem, not the solution.
I understand you don't like the fact that other countries can produce higher quality goods at lower cost than workers in the United States can. The
In my humble opinion, the
quality of goods in general have gone down considerably since many brands and items have moved production overseas, particularly China. Japan seemed to make high quality goods, but many of their own companies have moved their production to lower cost countries and quality control has dropped as a result. For example, I will never again buy a pair of jeans from Wal-Mart (made in China) since their pockets were so thin the last time I got a pair a few years ago that they broke within a week with only a moderate load. The overall material is so thin (low thread count in general) that other people I read looking for comments claims they don't last any time at all in general.
In short, your claim of "better quality" is suspect at best. They're cheaper to make in those countries, yes, but that in no way implies quality in the slightest. I've read report after report about the problems with worker in Mexico, for example. Look at the conditions at clothing manufacturers in Bangladesh and the accidents occurring due to pure greed there. You can make all the excuses you want all day long and it won't change the fact that ethics have taken a back seat to GREED in virtually every large publicly traded company in history. People blame the stock holders demanding profit or whatever or whomever they want, but the fact is they don't give a crap who they hurt so long as they get paid, from the banks to the manufacturers. They do what they do and take the ridiculous risks (which taxpayers end up having to shore up with "too large to fail" banks) because they're greedy and no other reason.
The point I was making is that the U.S. is a member of the World Trade Organization which replaced GATT and mediates multilateral trade agreements around the world. The U.S. can't just unilaterally decide to abrogate its treaties and impose a 10% tariff because it can't figure out how to tax corporate efficiently, something that the rest of world does very nicely, as another poster to this thread rightly pointed out.
Yes, it's
impossible for the U.S. to drop out of the world trade organization.
It's
impossible to for the U.S. repeal NAFTA ("Not A Fair Trade America")
It's just plain
impossible for us to undo the crap we've created.
If you want to collect more money from Apple, just say so. Pass a law
You act like it's a simple matter to change laws with a corrupt government in a greedy society based on the excesses of the ultra-rich. Yeah, and I'll single-handedly eliminate all red tape, pork and wasted spending in general while I'm at it. Everyone says they want rid of those things and a solution to the debt, but no one wants to DO any of it because
someone has to pay for it and any someones that get pointed to use their money to lobby their way out of it and the only people that don't have that available to them are ordinary citizens trying to make a living. We get stuck with the bill. We can't afford the bill either. But that's OK, run the rest up in debt and let our children and grandchildren and their grandchildren deal with it. As long as we got ours, that's all that matters.
