Apple hasn't announced its results yet. Has it now? If by "sheeple" you mean apples customers, not sure if what your point is other than people buy their products and the company gets revenue from the sales.
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Apple Expected to Report Strong Earnings Today, But Unlikely to Set Record-Breaking Quarter
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This. I have no qualms paying extra IF the money translated into quality and was invested into R&D for surprising future products. But it isn't. iCloud still sucks, Maps still suck, the entire Mac line is hopelessly out of date (the new MBP being the worst Mac I've ever used), pro apps like Aperture died on the vine without a word, Apple (seemingly) quit the standalone screen business and discontinued their router just when routers had started becoming interesting again (Amazon). Next to all that, competitors are on par with Apple in design, satisfaction and reliability.
So what all our money is actually doing is padding Apple's $250b war chest so Cook can buy Chinese ride share companies and rehash 3-year old products as new. Sad.
Don't worry, it'll probably be the only mention of "Mac" you'll have to see. The closest thing Apple will get to "Mac" during the conference call is the "pipeline."
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You're right, I hope Apple never updates the Macs and they make even more money.
I'd expect a modest increase in the dividend at this point, perhaps some additional repurchase. They can always announce something larger when/if they get the tax holiday. It is unlikely that would happen before the end of this year given that the current budget "plan" in Congress is to kick the can down the road to the end of the FY. Not that anything that comes out will be arguably tax "reform." I would stand to benefit but I know reform it will not be. It will be a gift to the investor class and nothing more.
Agreed. But if making a Hack can be done by a layperson in a few weeks, it really is pathetic that Apple can't just bite the bullet, accept that they ran into thermal issues, and bring back the cheesegrater. A few Apple engineers could bang that out in a month would be my guess.
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I do hope we see slightly larger dividends due to there being less outstanding shares due to buy back. I also don't think there is anything wrong with Apple tipping its hand as to what it would do if a Tax Holiday were announced. But I doubt they will.
I hope it will be more than just a gift to investor class, but I'm not counting on it. If they increased the standard deduction substantially they wouldn't decrease the amount of taxes collected all that much, but would simplify the tax filing process immensely for millions of Americans. That would be nice. And strategically it would be good political cover for the tax cuts going to the wealthy.
I didn't suggest that the Galaxy line wasn't a premium line. I said they don't sell premium models in as great of volume as Apple does. The mix for Samsung is less favorable (i.e., a greater portion of its sales come from lower priced models). That's clear from its own financial reporting.
I typically read Samsung's financial reporting as soon as it becomes available. I'm quite familiar with what it shows. That link you offered purports to show operating margin, not gross margin. (And, btw, the numbers it gives are either mislabeled or inaccurate.) That's what I indicated, that its operating margins are much lower than Apple's. Its gross margins, however, are not. If you doubt the veracity of that assertion, you can go to the source - Samsung's financial reporting.
The largest part of the disparity (when it comes to operating margins) comes from SG&A (not including R&D) spending. Samsung spends far more there than Apple does, relative to its total revenues and its gross profits, there.
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Apple will most likely see over $50 Billion in annual revenue from their Services Business starting Q1 this fall.
Are you referring to Apple's recognized Services revenue, i.e. what it typically reports? Or are you including, e.g., revenue that developers get from App Store sales which Apple doesn't count for its own revenue purposes?
If the former, then I don't think $50 billion for FY 2018 is likely. Apple's own target is a couple years off from that. If the latter, then I think Apple is likely to hit $50 billion for FY 2017.
A great many taxpayers go through the itemization exercise just to see if they qualify so I am not sure any simplification is achieved by raising the standard deduction. I am also not impressed with selling policy as something it is not. The message of our tax code is you are far better off living on passive income than working. And what has that done for us over the last 35 years but further concentrate wealth? More of the same, coming up.
The idea, as proposed, would be to do away with almost all of the available deductions. So, with an increased standard deduction, for many there'd be less need to go through the itemization exercise to figure out if that was a better option for them. Further, that exercise would be easier because (according to reports) there'd only be two kinds of things which were deductible - mortgage interest and charitable giving.
I'm not here advocating for the proposed changes. But they would, it seems, simplify things somewhat.
Reducing the number of brackets is also described as simplification. Not a very convincing cover story for what is really happening to tax burdens, especially if the package includes eliminating the estate tax.
Anyhow, sorry for the digression from the topic here.
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Seems likely. We will know in a few hours.
They almost certainly are. The question is how much.
Do we see a raise similar to what we've seen in recent years, around 10%? That would mean 63 cents or so.
Or do we see a larger increase, perhaps as part of a shift toward returning more capital through dividend payments and less through share repurchases (not necessarily in absolute terms, but relative to the other method)?
My predictions: Mac sales down, iPad sales down, iPhone steady. Further growth in services, no mention whatsoever of Watch or that movie making app they launched with such fanfare but everyone used once and then deleted or otherwise forgot about.
Totally agree with you philosophically. If you work for someone else providing labor (either physical or mental) you get taxed with limited exemptions. But reach a level where your income comes from investment or even better ownership of a business and all of a sudden a world of tax avoidance opens up for you.
But if standard deduction were doubled I think many people would know that there was no chance that itemization was going to make sense for them and they wouldn't bother to check. So yes tax filing would get a lot simpler for millions of families.
We might finally see some decent mac native spreadsheet software and other business apps. <_<
If I would be honest, on a normal circumstances I would not give a flying f. But since I like to read here, would be nice to see some new Macs so hopefully people would shut it once and for all. Not saying I blame them, just tired on reading same stuff on different articles totally unrelated to Macs.
The first $400k of capital gains are flat-taxed at 15%. If you work for yourself, you will pay more than that in payroll tax alone, easily double with income tax. The entire taxation system is already set up to reward investment over work and only figures to get more so. To me simplification is nothing but a shiny object designed to distract from what is really happening, which is that the investor class will be richly rewarded for already being rich, and everyone else gets crumbs and is supposed to shut up and be happy that they got anything at all.
Yep, paying low capital gains tax is basically a scam. And hedge fund guys who pay that tax rate on their salaries is a total scam. But I think the small business owner also gets good deals. I've never known a small business owner that didn't have tons of tax deductions piled up for dubious work related things like "meals" and "clothes" that I as a normal W-2 worker have to pay for in after tax dollars. So I'm not sympathetic to the tax burden of the small business owner either.
My error. I apologize. I meant over 50 billion in total revenue, with well over 5 billion for Services Revenue for Q2 2017. I do feel there is potential for Services Revenue to top $30 billion for Fiscal 2018.
