Apple Hit With Tax Lobbying Protest, Italian Investigation Into AppleCare Offerings

[iPhysicist]

Actually he is right. No EU law imposes the need for a "warranty". A warranty is slightly different to what the EU says must be present in all consumer contracts.

So what is the benefit of a warranty over a simple defect liability? Maybe this is not as important as one may think as most companies offer a two year or even longer guaranty ((ger:Garantie), maybe its the same as warranty maybe not) for their products.

 

[notabadname]

Agree, this should be 2 threads. As to warranty, this explains why the higher prices exist out of the US many times. That "required" 2 year warranty has to be covered by revenue from somewhere.

 

[blackpond]

Paying as little in taxes as possible is as American as apple pie.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

It's amazing what some people have the free time to do. I wish I could just vacate my job and run around protesting random nonsense all day. Unfortunately, I have to work so that I can meet all my tax obligations.

 

[kristo]

For me its easy. Apple is free to do as they please with the warranty/tax/Chinese slave labour, whatever.

Take it out on them financially (don't buy their stuff) and those that enable them (don't elect paid off officials/politicians)

I mean, everyone just bitches endlessly here (here being the internets) but yeah, shut up and just do something.

Go into a apple store, look at something and tell the sales person "Because of your corporate policy, no sale". Sure people can whine that it might cause stores to close and people to lose their jobs, oh well. Make something better. Go local again.

I am amazed that people defend this kind of thing. Corporate social responsibility seems to be a joke.

As everyone likes to say, money talks, but ultimately, they make money with us being their stuff. It's the only true way we can effect what they do.

"Sure, it's easy to say but I bet you still support big corporations, shop at Walmart etc"

Not really either. As much as possible I stick to local shops/businesses. I am lucky, I earn a good salary so I give some of back to my local community. If I don't take responsibility, who will. Not the slacktivists and apologists on the internets.

Ok, seem to have gotten sidetracked.

I just say, buy responsibly.

 

[wheezy]

... We should simply eliminate corporate donations and taxes altogether. Both are forms of stealing from the employees, and the share holders.

Logic! Finally! Thank you! Far too many people focus on what the politicians and stupid non-profit tax-evading protestor groups are doing/saying and not what is actually going on. "Oh! They made X Billion dollars and only paid X Million in taxes? Those criminals!" Nevermind the fact that every product they sell is taxed time and time again.

• Import tax on bringing it in from China
• Shipping company pays taxes on the revenue from shipping
• Shipping company pays tax on the gas it uses to ship the item
• Driver of shipping truck pays income tax for having a job
• Employee pays taxes from personal income for selling you the product at their job
• You pay sales tax when you buy the product

Now you want Apple (and other corps) to pay more money to the government just because they happen to make a product people want to buy, and have established sound business practices to (heaven-forbid) make a profit on that product? Do you WANT them to send the majority of their profits to the government and stop innovating on new products?

Do you get upset at yourself when you find a nice tax-credit available to you? Do you go get bitchy at your neighbor who just bought a house and got several thousand dollars in deductions for doing so?

At what point do you start to realize that the US government collects more money than ANYTHING, PERSON, COMPANY in the world and yet manages to be in debt more than a TRILLION dollars of what it took from everyone.

The problem isn't "big bad corporations" that actually make a profit from consumers choosing to buy the products, it's the government that takes money from everyone just for being here and living. If you want to protest something worthwhile, go find all the places of useless government spending in your city and protest that your taxes are paying for it.

</long rant>

 

[iStudentUK]

So what is the benefit of a warranty over a simple defect liability? Maybe this is not as important as one may think as most companies offer a two year or even longer guaranty ((ger:Garantie), maybe its the same as warranty maybe not) for their products.

There isn't much difference in practice. One small difference is that a warranty gives a definite amount of time (eg AppleCare gives 3 years). The law gives a maximum amount of time possible (eg in the UK 6 years) but you have to show that the duration the product lasted was not reasonable.

So a biro should maybe last a few days? A DVD player 2 years? A MacBook 3 years? The judge decides what is reasonable in the circumstances. Take my TV, I did buy a 5 year warranty for £30, I did that it because £30 was a very good price, and I thought convincing a judge a TV (which was a cheap one) should be expected to last 5 years could be a push.

Really the most important difference isn't legal at all, but in the attitude of big companies. Walk in to a store with a faulty product under warranty and they will often do a cursory check to make sure you haven't been stupid with it and damaged it yourself, then repair it quite happily. Walk in with a faulty product and try to claim under the law and you may well have to fight your case a bit more. For me saving the money on extended warranties is worth the extra time it can take to get a repair, some people may disagree.

 

[jakerichva]

That's not really true. A corporation is a separate tax entity, and must pay its calculated tax. Now, corps are better at making their share as little as possible. As to "absolutely nothing", Apple lists $2b, $3.8b, $4.5b as income tax the last 3 fiscal years. I don't know if that's as much as we'd all LIKE them to be paying as they have been very successful, but I'm pretty sure it isn't "nothing".

Collecting from customers is VAT or sales tax, and that is outside of corporate responsibility. They are simply required to collect & remit by the taxing authority. You can dislike the tax, but this one has nothing to do with a retailer. Frankly, if I sell you my car for $10k, you and I as individuals are supposed to calculate and remit sales tax, too.

Two different things. VAT or sales tax, is charged directly from the purchaser at the time of purchase. If the purchaser is the consumer, the tax ends there, and the stuckee is the consumer. If the purchaser is a corporation the tax is part of their cost of business, which is recovered in their pricing. So now that tax is paid by the consumer as part of the final price, on which VAT/Sales tax is again added. Some jurisdictions allow business-to-business sales without sales tax, some don't, but in either case any cost of producing the end product is passed to the buyer. By making the corporate tax lower, the companies keep the product costs lower for consumers.

Again, companies don't PAY taxes, they COLLECT taxes. Only consumers PAY taxes.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Once again here comes the Apple defenders until the end people.

Apple is asking the Government to open more tax loop holes. Just like Stevies $1 dollar paycheck when in reality he gets 10's of millions of dollars in "gifts" so that instead of paying taxes he only pays capital gains. One reason why I have heard economist saying Apples "Cash" hoard is not a full view on how much "cash" Apple really has since most of that "cash" is over seas and not moving anywhere until Apple knows they don't have to be taxed on it.

 

[Tiger8]

the problem i think is that the loop holes exist because of lobbying from corporations. so in a way it is the companies fault

Towards the end of the day the more money you make the more influential you are. Fact of life.

Apple is one of thousands of US businesses that do that, and unless you work for yourself and never done a single day of work with a corporation, you are benefiting from that, too.

 

[weckart]

This is stupid. Corporation should not be taxed, nor should not be allowed to donate money in any form.

We should simply eliminate corporate donations and taxes altogether. Both are forms of stealing from the employees, and the share holders. We SHOULD tax IMPORTS. If it's cheaper to build over seas, great, send them in. But tax them for costing US jobs.

This is simplistic thinking that really needs to die. Corporations are legal persons otherwise it opens up a heap of logistical problems. Legal liability being the most obvious one. Shareholders would run a mile if they were held jointly and severally liable for everything. That is why they invest in ltd companies.

As for taxing imports - well everyone can live inside a walled garden. Just see how many jobs survive when you cannot afford to import the raw materials (including oil) needed to manufacture at a price that people can afford to pay, to say nothing of tit-for-tat taxes on your exports. Protectionism just breeds inefficiency and inflation. Oh, and communism as well

So what is the benefit of a warranty over a simple defect liability? Maybe this is not as important as one may think as most companies offer a two year or even longer guaranty ((ger:Garantie), maybe its the same as warranty maybe not) for their products.

Warranties cut out the doubt over who makes the restitution. After 6 months, the retailer may oblige you to seek redress in court. A 1 or 2 year warranty gives you peace of mind.

 

[ThatsMeRight]

It's 6 months before the burden switches in EU law, not 12.

The EU law is often sufficient without a manufacturer's warranty. The "at time of delivery" is an easy obstacle to overcome. The idea is that if a product is of satisfactory quality (and it treated well by the user) then it should last a reasonable length of time. People tend to get hung up on the "at the time" issue.



No you don't. You have the right to go to court over a fault that manifests itself in the first two years. That is NOT the same as everything having a 2 year warranty. The court decides whether the product was fit for purpose and how long it should have lasted.



Actually he is right. No EU law imposes the need for a "warranty". A warranty is slightly different to what the EU says must be present in all consumer contracts.

You don't have to go to court at all. Just refering to the European Directives is enough. Sure, some American companies may ignore it but than there are free agencies which can support you. And yes, I've got this right from the European website ánd from the website of my (the Dutch) government. Sure, a store can be a real pain in the ass if they still ignore you, than you might have to go to court but this doesn't happen that often.

I was having a repair last week at the Apple Store in Birmingham.

A lady next to me was being seen by the genius. USB ports had failed. Genius printed off the quote for the work, £600, the MacBook was only 1 year and 2 months old. I told her about the Sales of Goods Act when the genius went upstairs. She stated this to the genius, he went to see the manager and came back and said "as a gesture of good will we will repair it for free".

Another guy came in and his screen stopped working. 2 years old MacBook Pro. Almost £500 for the repair. I had to intervene and said "do you see any physical damage?", no, the customer said it had been having problems where the backlight would flash on and off, obviously the problem occurred in the first year. Again, saved him £600. Again, other genius said the same "as a gesture of good will". I wanted to reply "no, within the law you will fix it" but I held myself back.

Yeah, you just have to mention it. Too bad so many customers don't know they have right on a longer warranty.

 

[centauratlas]

Exactly. Corporations are hidden tax collectors of government and used to trick the naive into rallying for higher taxes that they will then pay themselves - by higher prices on goods, lower wages etc.

And to top it off, corporate taxes are HIGHLY regressive so that those at the bottom pay a higher percentage than those at the top. So all the people arguing for higher corporate taxes are really arguing for higher taxes on the poor. People pay taxes, nothing else does. And shareholders (which include the "evil wealthy" and your retirement) can just invest in something else, somewhere else, leaving the non-flexible (e.g. the wage-earners and consumers) to pay the "higher corporate taxes" not to mention that most of a corporation's costs are wages meaning the wage earners get most of the corporate tax burden through lower wages.

The concept of an "employers share" (of withholding for example) is one of the hugest scams put over the gullible in the last 100 years. Ditto corporate taxes. But it serves a good political purpose - it gets the naive upset that "corporations don't pay anything" which can then be used to manipulate them into voting a particular way.



Apple can either invest the money it has overseas there and pay ZERO US taxes on it. Or Apple can invest the money here in the US in jobs, research, etc.

The choice is easy for the US: compete to be friendly to investors and free -- or compete for control over people and companies and watch companies and people leave to friendlier and freer climates.

Corporations (big or small) don't pay peanuts in taxes. They pay absolutely nothing. Corporations only collect taxes on behalf of the govt. They collect from shareholders and/or customers.

 

[Thunderhawks]

You know, I love Apple. I'm a shareholder and I want them to become as rich as possible.

And yet...yeah. US Uncut is absolutely right. We should all be complaining about such things.

But I kind of think protesting the companies is stupid. They'll always try to get the best deal they can. They should, that's just smart. It's the government that sets the rules, we should be complaining to them if the rules aren't strong enough.

This is like standing by the side of the road with a 'slow down' sign instead of trying to actually change the speed limit.

I would say instead of "change the speed limit" Put a red light there!

If this is all legally possible, so be it.

This protest is like the typical storm in a water glass. They'll get some press and it will go way. Next!

 

[centauratlas]

Business needs to be held to a moral standard of serving the society first, then profit.
/rant

Who is society? Who determines what needs of society should be served first? In a free country, individuals determine that and that means doing what is legal, at minimum. Then each person decides for themselves where to spend *their* money and how on what things they think are best for society.

If YOU (and a million other people) want to go and start a business to compete with Apple or anyone else please feel free. Put your hard earned money in there or your time and then pay as much extra to the government as you want. In a free country you can do that.

Just like the people who complain about AT&T - round up 10 million other investors, each put in $5000 and start a competing company, then see if you can do it better for less money. If so, great. If not, great too because it will have been a valuable lesson.

 

[iStudentUK]

You don't have to go to court at all. Just refering to the European Directives is enough. Sure, some American companies may ignore it but than there are free agencies which can support you. And yes, I've got this right from the European website ánd from the website of my (the Dutch) government. Sure, a store can be a real pain in the ass if they still ignore you, than you might have to go to court but this doesn't happen that often.

Yes, sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant to say was if it went to court (which you of course have the option to do if you can't work it out with the company in question) then the judge would decide what is a reasonable length of time for the product to last. With a warranty it is there in black and white.

Technically, the EU directive isn't binding law. An EU directive is an instruction to member states to implement a law to that effect within a certain time limit. That is important if you do ever end up in court because a company isn't playing ball, as a court can't give effect to something that isn't law! So it is important to find how your country enabled the directive, for people in the UK it is mostly through the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended), I don't know about other countries but it is useful to find out.

 

[jjhny]

Insane Tax Code

Taxes are mostly wasted to pay for the buddies of the politicians - as well as incredible amounts of fraud in most programs and more payoffs. Plus we don't even have the money that the government spends and the corporate taxes ain't gonna fix it. The math dooms us anyway. God help us when the interest rates go up - that will be it.

Personally a flat simplified tax is the answer to all the nonsense, plus the government being reduced in size by at least half.

Also, please go to the IRS site and read the forms for corporate taxes - I have - they are the most INSANE documents you will ever see. We are slaves to an insane, out of control govt bureaucracy and political class gone mad. The giant corporations have all the lawyers and accountants to deal with this - the rest of us don't, which is why we have an insane tax code.

I am not for giant centralized corporations, just I am not for giant centralized government - insane centralization is the curse of the modern world.

 

[Tiger8]

I have no doubt in my mind apple, or pretty much any big name company, could shift operation to America and still flourish while keeping prices the same.

You mean like how AUTO manufacturing in detroit is flourishing?

 

[centauratlas]

Talk about a whoosh. The point is that only people pay taxes. Corporations just collect the taxes from the consumers who buy the products through higher prices (and lower wages to employees) to pay those taxes.

Imagine a one person company, me. Say I make $10,000 per year. A friend wants to join me and she was making $10,000 per year doing consulting like me. Together we made $20,000. Say we paid 20% per year in taxes individually so we each paid $2000 in taxes and retained $8,000.

Now we form a corporation, we still bring in $20,000/year. Now we pay a 40% corporate tax rate. So, we pay $8000/year in corporate taxes, leaving $6000/year for each of the two of us ($12000 total), plus we pay 20% income taxes on the $6000 each. We can't live on that, so what do we do?

We raise our prices, now we bring in, say, $30000/year in order to pay our corporate taxes and we might break even then.

Who pays the extra money we needed for corporate taxes? The consumer of our services or goods because we raised prices!!! (Or if we had employees, we'd pay them a bit less too, or perhaps make the raise 1% instead of 3%). Who else hurts? The other person we *might* have hired to help with the extra money we spent on taxes since we incorporated -- they're unemployed.

Who pays the largest percentage of their income out each year for goods and services (groceries, oil changes etc)? The poor! Corporate taxes hit the poor the hardest because people with more income can choose to spend a smaller percentage.


* All of this applies to C Corps and ignores S Corps, LLCs etc because they can only scale so far and all of the large companies like Apple, Microsoft, AT&T etc are C Corps.

That's not really true. A corporation is a separate tax entity, and must pay its calculated tax. Now, corps are better at making their share as little as possible. As to "absolutely nothing", Apple lists $2b, $3.8b, $4.5b as income tax the last 3 fiscal years. I don't know if that's as much as we'd all LIKE them to be paying as they have been very successful, but I'm pretty sure it isn't "nothing".

Collecting from customers is VAT or sales tax, and that is outside of corporate responsibility. They are simply required to collect & remit by the taxing authority. You can dislike the tax, but this one has nothing to do with a retailer. Frankly, if I sell you my car for $10k, you and I as individuals are supposed to calculate and remit sales tax, too.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

"Apple plays huge games with their taxes. By disguising profits in the U.S. as foreign earnings in low-tax countries, Apple dodges billions of dollars of taxes they should be paying," the group said in a statement this week.

This shouldn't really be a shock to anyone. They, like many corporations today also dodge paying U.S. workers by hiring Chinese workers at pennies on the dollar. It's called GREED.

Guess what? Steve Jobs isn't your friend. He's not your buddy. He's not a patriot that cares about his country. He's a greedy CEO that sends US jobs overseas to make even more money. If Mamon is your bag, then you probably worship the guy. If not, you probably don't.

 

[Mr.damien]

Would it KILL you to pay $1,500 for the iPad 2?

Hahaha so funny. typical Republican answer.

Just a reminder that Germany is producing a LOT at home and was still the first exporter of goods until this year. China just go ahead but it's 90 millions vs 1,2 billions people country.

Moreover if the taxes is as high as the money you win by moving production your argument of 1500$ iPad is just ****ed. KitchenAid is also still producing in USA and have good price regarding made in China or Korea competition and better quality.

Get a brain.

 

[jonnysods]

Pay up Apple. The rest of us have to!

 

[Mr.damien]

You mean like how AUTO manufacturing in detroit is flourishing?

Or you mean like Toyota still making cars in Japan, Europe, USA and which is the first constructor of cars in the world and the most profitable ?

The funny part is that now they started moving production to low cost country for some parts - as you seems to like - they have now mass recall for bad manufacturing that cost them a LOT more than benefits they made by moving their production ...

 

[AppleDroid]

Paying as little in taxes as possible is as American as apple pie.

Sadly for corporations this is right. We wouldn't have such an enormous deficit if they paid even half of the taxes owed. (Especially Big Oil, GE etc)

 

[ThatsMeRight]

Yes, sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant to say was if it went to court (which you of course have the option to do if you can't work it out with the company in question) then the judge would decide what is a reasonable length of time for the product to last. With a warranty it is there in black and white.

Technically, the EU directive isn't binding law. An EU directive is an instruction to member states to implement a law to that effect within a certain time limit. That is important if you do ever end up in court because a company isn't playing ball, as a court can't give effect to something that isn't law! So it is important to find how your country enabled the directive, for people in the UK it is mostly through the Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended), I don't know about other countries but it is useful to find out.

Yes, that's correct! An EU directive is indeed an instruction. You could better see it as a 'law with space'. E.g. a EU directive can say: "40% of a cigarette pack should be covered with health warnings". Than all member states have to do so, but they can handle it in their own way (one can say, we use images, the other can say that they use more space etc.).

Directives are a weird thing. Well, in any way: things like warranty are much better covered in Europe than in the US.