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iTunes Store Now Accepting Donations for Superstorm Sandy Relief
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How the **** do you know they haven't donated.
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Are you serious? Is a donation only worthy if you announce it to the world?
Also, for those of you in America who haven't clicked yet, this makes it easy for all of us internationally to donate to the American red cross. Those transactions alone mean Apple is shouldering a big burden with its own infrastructure. Quite generous if you ask me.
Q1: How do you know they haven't donated? How do you know how much Cook has donated? How much Ive has donated? How much any of their shareholders have donated? Their board of directors? Staff? Why do you assume the worst?
Q2: What do you call the provision of free fundraising services? Many large organisations do the majority of their good work through donating skills and resources. Cash is easy, but who else has an online store with hundreds of millions of account holders that they can encourage to make a donation with a single few clicks?
Just when the media, local and national authorities remind us "how strong Americans are together during tough times", a bunch of wealthy gadget owners rip themselves off on an online forum...
Donate, don't donate. Do whatever you want. Just show some respect for the victims by being SILENT (or open it up, but say something useful).
Good luck to all involved in that mess.
Donate, don't donate. Do whatever you want. Just show some respect for the victims by being SILENT (or open it up, but say something useful).
Good luck to all involved in that mess.
You have no clue if they have donated or not. Not to mention the number of companies worth millions and millions of dollars, if not more, in the US alone that have made no public donations and done no public thing to help. Just by putting the link in the iTunes store you would probably be surprised how many people will donate that might not normally donate and that alone is more than thousands of companies will do. But hey, lets just get on Apple for possibly not donating. Some of the people attacking Apple for this move are probably the same ones that aren't even willing to donate a simple $5.
Apple have donated on the past and perhaps they have again on this ocasion. Get out of your cave.
Red Cross helps people all over the world. In fact, they were first responders in Haiti. Might want to go do a little reading up on exactly what Red Cross's goals and accomplishments are.
"Your store does not support charity gifting."
"Buying a charity gift is not supported in your country's store at this time." Yay.
"Buying a charity gift is not supported in your country's store at this time." Yay.
I haven't read the entire thread so this may have been mentioned already. If Apple is truly just forwarding every single penny, then Apple is, at a minimum making a donation equivalent to the credit card transaction fees associated with each donation. In general, those fees are between 2-3%. So if there is a total donation of $1,000,000, then Apple is contributin around $20k-$30k. Also, lets assume the receipt that Apple gives you shows the full amount that you have donated, then this 20-30k is a donation on each of our behalf and Apple can't write any of it off.
Yes that is a drop in the bucket for Apple, but every little bit counts in this time of need. I believe that Apple will step up and donate more than that though. I wouldn't be surprised if they matched a percentage of all donations on behalf of Apple.
GL
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They have already. Whenever someone asks you for donations to a charity, chances are that the person asking is a professional and actually gets paid. Of $50 you give to a charity, some never reaches it but goes to the people doing the collecting.
In this case, Apple donates the service of asking people for money, getting donations, and passing the money to the Red Cross, absolutely free. If Apple didn't donate this service, the Red Cross would have had to pay a huge amount of money for this service.
See above. Think before you post.
It is a generous act, because it costs Apple's money to do this, and usually the Red Cross will _not_ get hundred percent of a donation, because the intermediary skims some money off. The people who made this change to the iTunes Store, for example, want to get paid a salary, and that salary is paid by Apple, not the Red Cross.
And saying that people here would consider Google or Microsoft cheap if they did the same thing is an unproven and unjustified accusation. And logically, if calling Google or Microsoft cheap for this was a sign of an evil, twisted mind (which I don't disagree with), then what is calling Apple cheap?
In this case, Apple donates the service of asking people for money, getting donations, and passing the money to the Red Cross, absolutely free. If Apple didn't donate this service, the Red Cross would have had to pay a huge amount of money for this service.
See above. Think before you post.
It is a generous act, because it costs Apple's money to do this, and usually the Red Cross will _not_ get hundred percent of a donation, because the intermediary skims some money off. The people who made this change to the iTunes Store, for example, want to get paid a salary, and that salary is paid by Apple, not the Red Cross.
And saying that people here would consider Google or Microsoft cheap if they did the same thing is an unproven and unjustified accusation. And logically, if calling Google or Microsoft cheap for this was a sign of an evil, twisted mind (which I don't disagree with), then what is calling Apple cheap?
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http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-v...ng-foreign-cash-back-to-the-us-blames-tax-law
"Apple made an aggressive pitch for a corporate tax holiday Monday, stressing that it plans to keep more than $60 billion parked offshore until Congress makes it easier for companies to bring those profits home."
So, Apple dont want pay the taxes but needs our money to support Red Cross? Shame on you, Apple. Just your taxes alone can bring more GDP, decrease US debt and help much more to the victims and whole US economy. Instead of doing it - just another cheap PR trick.
"Apple made an aggressive pitch for a corporate tax holiday Monday, stressing that it plans to keep more than $60 billion parked offshore until Congress makes it easier for companies to bring those profits home."
So, Apple dont want pay the taxes but needs our money to support Red Cross? Shame on you, Apple. Just your taxes alone can bring more GDP, decrease US debt and help much more to the victims and whole US economy. Instead of doing it - just another cheap PR trick.
You didn't by any chance read the article? Where it says that 100% of each donation goes to the Red Cross? Which, by the way, isn't going to happen with most donations that you make any other way, because the people asking you for donations do that for a living?
Now if you want to make Apple to not only donate this service to the Red Cross, but add cash as well: Find out where you get Apple gift cards with a rebate, and buy some. Apple doesn't get the full cash amount for gift cards. Use them to donate. (Don't know if this works. If it doesn't work, you still have donated, which is a good thing).
When you donate through the Apple Store, the Red Cross gets 100% of your donation (Apple eats all the expenses). When you donate to the Red Cross directly, the Red Cross may have to pay the credit card charges, so you can't even be sure they get 100%.
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Then I assume you will be donating quite a bit to the relief efforts since you have $100k just from Apple and people are struggling to find potable water!
But, in any case, a company's #1 duty is to it's SHs. End of story...
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Wait a second. Apple made a lot of profit for example in the UK. Why on earth do you think the US treasury has any rights to taxes on those profits? Clearly those taxes should go to the UK.
Actually, shareholders are the least important people for a company. Shareholders are the first to lose they money when a company gets in trouble. The pecking order is customers, employees, creditors and shareholders. How does being stingy to people in need, and thus alienating customers, help the shareholders?
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Just read the article - "As it stands, companies have to pay their full corporate rate, as high as 35 percent, on profits made anywhere in the world. The corporations can defer paying those taxes until the profits are brought to the United States, and also receive credits for taxes paid to foreign governments."
Most of Apple's financial activity concentrated in offshores, where taxes significantly lower than in the US. And if the company try to hide some taxes overseas - any great idea about charity activity with Red Cross looks just as cheap PR trick. So simple.
Unfortunately we had to wait for Steve Jobs to leave for such things to happen. I'm still flabbergasted that he cancelled all donations after rejoining Apple, saying that "Apple products will bring more good to the world than their donations to charities".
Well done Apple
Apple has actually been generous in a way with this outreach.
Every transaction on the internet, somewhere incurs a fee for that transaction taking place, all be it with Apple making millions of transactions a day that fee will be quite small, but here Apple is offering to take that fee and absorb it to allow the Red Cross access to a greater base of people, with as has been pointed out, debit and credit card details all stored and can donate at a click of one button.
So Apple is in a way donating to a degree, as I said, those fees won't be much, but they will be absorbed somewhere, and at least it isn't the charity!
Apple has actually been generous in a way with this outreach.
Every transaction on the internet, somewhere incurs a fee for that transaction taking place, all be it with Apple making millions of transactions a day that fee will be quite small, but here Apple is offering to take that fee and absorb it to allow the Red Cross access to a greater base of people, with as has been pointed out, debit and credit card details all stored and can donate at a click of one button.
So Apple is in a way donating to a degree, as I said, those fees won't be much, but they will be absorbed somewhere, and at least it isn't the charity!
Tax Deductability
It's probably not technically tax deductable to iTunes customers making the donation because you are giving the money to Apple and not to a recognized charity. That's why Apple puts the disclaimer about it showing up as a iTunes purchase and not being deductable.
For Apple, the donation probably has to be treated as income by them, because they are getting money from a customer. Then they also would get to take the tax deduction of that amount of income as they turn around and make the donation to the Red Cross. So it's a wash for them....they aren't making money by getting to take the tax deduction because they are also increasing their income and tax liability by the same amount.
For the customer, I'm guessing (note only guessing, as I'm no tax specialist of any sort) that if you saved your iTunes receipt showing a contribution to the Red Cross through iTunes and then claimed it in your itemized deductions, it probably wouldn't raise any red flags. On the off chance you got audited you could probably lose the deduction but it would be doubtful you'd be penalized for committing any kind of fraud. If you are super concerned about getting a fully legal tax deduction, it's probably best to donate directly to the Red Cross yourself and get a receipt. However Apple's offer is generous in that it does open up the chance to donate to lots of eyeballs who might not have gone out of their way to make a donation, but will do so because of the convenience of putting the charge through iTunes.
It's probably not technically tax deductable to iTunes customers making the donation because you are giving the money to Apple and not to a recognized charity. That's why Apple puts the disclaimer about it showing up as a iTunes purchase and not being deductable.
For Apple, the donation probably has to be treated as income by them, because they are getting money from a customer. Then they also would get to take the tax deduction of that amount of income as they turn around and make the donation to the Red Cross. So it's a wash for them....they aren't making money by getting to take the tax deduction because they are also increasing their income and tax liability by the same amount.
For the customer, I'm guessing (note only guessing, as I'm no tax specialist of any sort) that if you saved your iTunes receipt showing a contribution to the Red Cross through iTunes and then claimed it in your itemized deductions, it probably wouldn't raise any red flags. On the off chance you got audited you could probably lose the deduction but it would be doubtful you'd be penalized for committing any kind of fraud. If you are super concerned about getting a fully legal tax deduction, it's probably best to donate directly to the Red Cross yourself and get a receipt. However Apple's offer is generous in that it does open up the chance to donate to lots of eyeballs who might not have gone out of their way to make a donation, but will do so because of the convenience of putting the charge through iTunes.
Yes, all they care about is, is their image. They would've done better by saying: We donated XXXXXXXX dollars, now it's up to you to donate also. But this is just Apple giving us the impression, they actually care about people...LOL
He was probably right. Growing a company and it's payroll is probably the greatest contribution a company can make to society, because that money eventually benefits us all. I'll let others argue how much more is appropriate.