Ugh, watching this from the UK and from the perspective of a UK tax-payer, this was a bloody pointless media circus.
Everyone was adamant to recognise that Apple has not broken any tax law, it has simply ran its business for the past years abiding by a tax law that allowed them to do what they've done regarding transfer of capital to Ireland.
If the United States has a defective, outdated tax law, it's not Apple's or any other company's fault to use the loopholes of that law to maximise profits. The average citizen does it by finding expenses they can claim from the taxman.
Plus, if Apple's abroad money cannot be invested in the US what is Levin's problem with Apple using US government benefits for their R&D when the company is paying tax on its US profit? That abroad money can't be used in the US so it's not like Apple is using non US taxed profits to expand in the US.
Apple sells abroad and is taxed for their sales abroad. Why on Earth should it pay tax again in the United States? Because it's an American company? So being an multinational "american" company means that you have to pay taxes twice?
This is ridiculous and such a topic of no-discussion that I don't know how it became an issue to start with. IF the US Government needs to reform its Tax Code, then go ahead and do it without turning everything into a freaking reality TV circus.
If these people have such a big problem with Apple's "unallocated" money, then by all means create an efficient tax system that allows multinational companies to bring that money back to the US and invest it there. If not, a company as the single average John Doe has all the right to protect their assets from being stolen by an inefficient Government Tax Office.
I don't advocate tax evasion. I think everyone needs to pay taxes especially in countries with decent public services (which, again, isn't really the case of the US where everything is either private or public-private), but even in the case of countries governments who care minimally for their citizens, their very citizens have the right to protect their assets when the tax rates start edging on legally accepted robbery (such as is the case in Spain, Portugal, etc. where the tax rates have gone way above what is socially acceptable).
Cut on the expenditure. Don't steal your citizens.
I don't mean to offend any of the american members of this board, but some of the sheer stupidity of the claims that were made at this hearing are at the same level of stupidity of "we can't have that communist monstrosity which is a public healthcare system".
It's like these people are raised in such a "view-centric" way that they just can't see past their own individual agendas. It's ridiculous.