600 billion dollar company hoarding all that money and Apple fan boys applaud that.
My god, what a FAILED society.
My god, what a FAILED society.
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Steve Wozniak Says Apple Should Pay 50% Tax Rate
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Thanks for the great chart! The lines diverge in 2009 for the reasons stated in the original post.
cite facts:
https://www.atr.org/full-list-ACA-tax-hikes-a6996
Check out #21!
Here is the chart you provided for clarity. The business income chart has no scale provided, but it is timescale correct and magnitude correct. Note the ONLY divergence of the lines occur when the fiscal policy of huge new spending starting 2009 and huge new taxation starting 2012 are installed and maintained. Note the drop in business income and further drop in money velocity as the 24% higher income taxation kicks in.
Despite all that, the only thing that reduced deficits was sequestration installed by R Congress against the will of the D President, with many dog and pony shows railing against it. But once the deficit declined Hoebama took credit!
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I can't speak for the fanboys, but I applaud anyone who makes money filling peoples' needs, whether it be selling products or creating the jobs that move those products from concept to use. I also applaud when those who produce find ways to keep the state from taking what the state should have no claim on and instead use the money derived from that production for their own benefit.
It comes down to property rights. As far as I'm concerned, Apple has a right to do what they want with that money. Hire people. Fire people. Hire better people. Build more factories wherever it best suits them. Design new machines and new software that people want, and build even more beautiful locations to sell them. Or close down every store and shut the entire place down and divide all the money amongst their shareholders. They can burn that entire pile of cash, use it to insulate the new campus, include a random amount in every 10th package that leaves their factories, or whatever they choose. No one forced a single customer to buy a single product. Apple doesn't have to justify anyone in the general populace unless that person is either a customer or a shareholder. The only thing Apple has to justify to their customers is that the product behaved as expected for as long as the customer had hoped. Everything else is justifiable to the shareholders only.
A failed society, however, I'd agree with that though not the reasoning behind it.
Those were the days...almost before my time. Definitely before I entered the workforce. But I remember them nonetheless.
Taxes are the same as programming... the more logic you put in there thinking you just added a bunch of cool features the more bugs there are. I am totally in favor of K.I.S.S. Apple and other clever tax avoiders will pay their rightfully due taxes once they are actually rightfully due and there are no bugs to be exploited.
On the former it sounds like a ****-up. However a twenty year old road isn't a terrible target for resurfacing.
On the latter America spends rather a lot more on healthcare than people with a public system.
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I think economically China has done rather well. As it has on a number of other measures like life expectancy.
This is the biggest problem with business today. At one point, labor was considered a part of the company itself., and its wellbeing lead to the success of the company itself. A happy employee is a loyal employee, and thus more productive employee. Everyone gets a little bit of something out of the employer/employee relationship.
Now, it seems that anyone residing below the executive members are an unfortunate necessity, and treated as such. Keep what you can, but squeeze the rest for every dime and hour of work you can. Yet, weirdly enough, the expectations of loyalty still remains.
There's no mutual benefit to working a job anymore. You're a scrub, and you should be thankful some more enterprising individual was kind enough to give you a job.
The problem started, I think, when companies began hiring outside executives and giving them performance-based pay.
That's a recipe for internal disaster, as the new execs trim everything to the bone in order to pay themselves the most... then usually leave the now hollowed out firm to go do the same elsewhere.
That's a recipe for internal disaster, as the new execs trim everything to the bone in order to pay themselves the most... then usually leave the now hollowed out firm to go do the same elsewhere.
This one was a bad target, especially when immediately afterwards the state cried about not having money to work on projects that had been on hold for years.
I really can't understand why people think that this is the solution to health care costs:
1. require everyone to have insurance
2. take money from productive society to pay for those who can't pay for their own insurance
I mean, if the end result was to be a lowering of costs, the way to do it isn't to throw a safety blanket over people and absolve them of the risk built into their own upkeep.
We can go around on that for quite some time. I would rather say take a look at the writings of people like Stewart Donovan and Dr. Ron Paul on why this is, as both have written extensively about the subject. Dr. Paul, regardless of your opinion of his political beliefs has a very eye-opening perspective on how medicine has changed since his days as a flight surgeon in the early 60s. Bottom line: the higher prices are due to AMA/federal/state games and cronyism. It can't be solved by taking more money from people who worked for it and hoping some of the finds it way through the bureaucracy to help buy insurance for people.
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Again, what they have done is legal. And again, why is the solution to this non-problem to make sure Apple pays personal income tax rates rather than to find a way for persons to pay corporate rates?
The US government, if it seized half of Apple's available capital, would burn through it in about 10 days at their 2011 spending rate, which is the last year I have info for. So 10 days after seizure its gone, then what? Who is next? Or does everyone stop saying "Apple has $200bn in cash", and start saying "Apple has $100bn in cash, lets do something about that"?
How much is moral for them to keep? Isn't that what this is all about?
This is a topic worthy of deeper discussion. But I think the issue really revolves around three separate factors:
Firstly, I think that incredible improvements in the efficiency of international shipping made it much, much easier to rationalize the production of goods overseas, or wherever labor costs were lower. The introduction of the humble shipping container; the development of massive ports designed specifically rounding handling such containers; and the building of huge container ships themselves has brought the cost of moving massive amounts of freight around the world down to a tiny fraction of what it did back in the days when ships were loaded essentially by hand.
Secondly, I think that the virtual destruction of organized labor in this country, enabled through legislative action at both the state and Federal level, has fundamentally altered the balance of power between labor and management. These days management - especially in manufacturing - operates on a "take it or leave it" basis. Unions, and their memberships, know they are dealing with a very weak hand.
Lastly, I think that changes in the tax laws; which made executive compensation far more lucrative has fundamentally changed the game. I remember, forty some years ago, when my stepfather was a very senior executive with a local multinational - his salary of around $100K seemed like a fortune. But it was still only three or four times what guys in the foundry were making. (The CEO of the company, making perhaps $300,000 - seemed rich as Croesus).
Why did senior managers suddenly decide they were worth millions per year, rather than merely hundreds of thousands? Thats open for debate. But I believe that the Reagan tax cuts; which drastically cut tax rates, but especially on Capital Gains, opened the door for the huge stock-option payouts that separate the 1% of the corporate world from the rest of us. And once executives started seeing their contemporaries at comparable firms taking home seven-figure bonuses - it started an executive compensation spiral that shows no sign of abating.
Sorry, I totally disagree that China has done well or if it has, that the reason is due to government control.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, China was held back for decades by a communist regime with centrally planned economy, which caused massive famines and social unrest killing millions of people.
Only after the government let its citizens pursue their individual economic interests, did China start improving the conditions of its citizenry.
The fact that China has grown is entirely due to the decentralizafion of the economy and decreasing of government control.
Today, Chinese economy still has many problems, remaining from old communist practices, namely massive credit bubble and property bubble from government officials making ****** investments, because they were incentivized to inflate their economic numbers in order to get promoted.
In addition, the economic inequality between government officials and citizens is much more extreme than the inequality between rich and poor in the USA.
Richest people in China are billionaires, just like in the US, but the poorest live on much less income (capital city GDP per capita, which is among the highest in China, is less than 10000 USD; poor people make far far far less).
Something close to 2/3 of Chinese millionaires wish to move to a different county.
Does that sound like a success to you?
Not surprisingly, the number one destination for wealthy Chinese people is USA.
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So, economically unproductive people with serious illnesses that are expensive to treat and who don't have wealthy family members should just be left to die? Is that what you are saying?
I think we are agreed that the "insurance" model of paying for medical care is flawed. But, in my case, I'm not just willing to let people die in the street. Every civil society, if it is a civil society and is more than just a collection of selfish self-made men, needs a method to provide reasonable healthcare to everyone. And, inevitably, most people will eventually need to make significant use of the healthcare system.
Oh yes, poor Google, Apple, and other companies.
They were forced into finding, creating and exploiting incredibly obscure and complicated tax loopholes.
They had no choice. None at all.
Congratulations for a post that is long on rhetoric and drama but does nothing to respond to the points I raised. No one has been able to produce a shred of evidence that Apple's tax avoidance is in violation of any laws. And also, if you were in Apple's position, you would probably do exactly what Apple is doing. Show me an entity that pays a cent more in taxes than what it is legally obligated to.
My point is that if you or anyone else doesn't like how Apple is taking advantage of "incredibly obscure and complicated tax loopholes" then direct your anger at Congress because they're the ones who created those loopholes. Call on them to get their act together and close them.
I'm a PhD student in engineering and I'm planning to either be a professor or work at a national lab. I really believe in the important of basic research, higher education and the overall important of infrastructure. So I'm totally willing to agree with the idea that corporations owe something to society since corporations wouldn't be what they are without good schools/universities, roads and other infrastructure.
However the difference is that I would rather be upset at the real culprits than corporations who are doing nothing but fulfilling their fiduciary duty to shareholders.
Nice projection, but its nowhere near my beliefs.
I am saying specifically that it is not correct to take from people who work for their benefit and give that money to other people. To do so is not charity, it is theft. Please show me where this belief ends with me saying the unproductive sector should be left to die.
You have to get past the notion that "someone must do something". This ultimately leads to "someone must aggregate power to force everyone around me to do something that the majority can agree on". Once in place the people behind that always manage to manipulate the majority or even create one if they need to. The state declares itself the monopoly on that force, and then we end up with our present system: always dysfunctional, always willing to take a little more - just a little - to accomplish what they couldn't accomplish with that last little bit.
In a truly civilized society, one where people are allowed to live for their own benefit without a parasite attached to them in the form of the state, charity finds a much easier path. Historically, charitable donations rise when taxes fall. A side benefit is that wages can fall since the workers don't give up as much in taxes, and that reduction in cost can be directed towards new jobs or reduced prices to the end user. In either case, you have a benefit.
So no, I don't think the economically productive should be allowed to die in the street. But I do believe that you shouldn't care for those people at the involuntary expense of others. Just by hanging the words "by authority of the government" on it doesn't make it any less of a theft.
Ethically he is, of course. But until the laws change to close the loopholes they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make them as much money as possible. If that means they exploit every tax loophole there is they will and obviously do. This is part of the reason I dislike publicly traded companies.
Yeah, I get it. Taxes are theft. In your opinion. But, surprise, not mine.
Go live on a desert island. Experience no taxes. Enjoy talking to yourself.
The problem with market-based healthcare is that a truly free market is basically impossible. Imagine that because of a medical emergency you are in excruciating pain. Now, negotiate with the ER staff on whether you really need that MRI or CAT scan, and, what the price should be.
It is a logical consequence. It is also a fact that countries that have state-provided or coordinated healthcare have the longest life-expectancies.
Here is a chart. How many purely libertarian-healthcare countries in the top 30?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
You have to get past the notion that we live in a frontier society. And the notion that we need a "pure" economy, whether pure capitalism or pure socialism. When, demonstrably, mixed economies work better. Here in the developed world, pure free market capitalism doesn't work very well for some things. It does work well for others. TCP/IP, the Internet, and BSD Unix, were all created by researchers and programmers being paid on government grants, in government-funded think tanks and universities.
Of course, Apple created the first user-friendly Unix GUI that ordinary people (instead of programmers and engineers) really liked using. Capitalism is great at some things. Libertarianism claims that it is best for everything, when, obviously, it isn't. Which makes Libertarianism yet another dysfunctional fundamentalist religious belief.
The vast majority of capital gains taxes are paid on sale of a business, home, commercial property or longer term stock holding. Middle class to upper middle class stuff.
When you take proceeds out of an IRA or other qualified plan, whether the gain is ordinary income, dividends, or capital gain, it is taxed at ordinary income rates (43.4% I think if income over $150,000). Plus any state tax. Pretty high in NY, CA, etc. Over 50% of your income is paid in income tax alone. That can't be ethical, right?
Capital Gains, Dividends, Ordinary Income
2011-2012
15% 15% 35%
2013+ (current law)
23.8% 43.4% 43.4%
To put that in perspective, under Pelosi/Reid/Obama (Democrats controlling the House, Senate, Presidency);
Capital gains taxes have been increased 58.7%,
Dividends taxes have been increased 189.3% (grandma)
Ordinary income taxes have been increased 24.0%
There's some perspective for you.
That is a massive reduction in income to regular folks by "greedy government", not "greedy corporations" or anybody whatsoever not "paying their fair share". If you are paying 24-189% more than a couple of years ago, how can that increased amount NOT be your fair share? How in any way is it NOT greedy government? Fair question using fact based analysis. The D talking points are political misdirection.
http://dailysignal.com/2009/11/06/how-the-pelosi-plan-kills-jobs/
http://www.supremelaw.org/copyrite/dasia.net/taxfree.htm
To requote myself for context,
Check this out.
http://www.econport.org/content/handbook/NatIncAccount/CalculatingGDP/Income.html
Income Approach to Calculating GDP
This approach calculates National Income, NI. NI is the sum of the following components:
Labor Income (W)
Rental Income (R)
Interest Income (i)
Profits (PR)
NI = W + R + i + PR
Labor Income (W):
Salaries, wages, and fringe benefits such as health or retirement. This also includes unemployment insurance and government taxes for Social Security.
Rental Income (R):
This is income received from property received by households. Royalties from patents, copyrights and assets as well as imputed rent are included.
Interest Income (i):
Income received by households through the lending of their money to corporations and business firms. Government and household interest payments are not included in the national income.
Profits (PR):
The amount firms have left after paying their rent, interest on debt, and employee compensation. GDP calculation involves accounting profit and not economic profit.
With that said, the Fed's response to the FEDGOV's approach of using debt funded stimulus spending rather than tax reduction to revive the economy, rather than the Fed increasing reliance on temporary liquidity programs was a choice. By setting interest rates at zero savers incomes were zeroed out overnight and for 9 years. The 186% increase on dividend taxes incented payers to pay less and receivers to have less to spend. That impact on Income GDP was meaningful and directly contributed to the reduction of velocity of money.
The other three categories, wages, rent and profit income was taxed an additional 24%-58%. That impact on Income GDP was meaningful and directly contributed to the reduction of velocity of money.
Because company income is taxed twice, once at the company level and once at the individual receiving it, that double taxation is subject to the increase in tax rates, so the net effect of that category is actually a 48-116% increase in taxation. That is obviously and directly hurtful to income. Government just squanders it.
Just the facts.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...pay-50-tax-rate.1968991/page-13#post-22837579
When you take proceeds out of an IRA or other qualified plan, whether the gain is ordinary income, dividends, or capital gain, it is taxed at ordinary income rates (43.4% I think if income over $150,000). Plus any state tax. Pretty high in NY, CA, etc. Over 50% of your income is paid in income tax alone. That can't be ethical, right?
Capital Gains, Dividends, Ordinary Income
2011-2012
15% 15% 35%
2013+ (current law)
23.8% 43.4% 43.4%
To put that in perspective, under Pelosi/Reid/Obama (Democrats controlling the House, Senate, Presidency);
Capital gains taxes have been increased 58.7%,
Dividends taxes have been increased 189.3% (grandma)
Ordinary income taxes have been increased 24.0%
There's some perspective for you.
That is a massive reduction in income to regular folks by "greedy government", not "greedy corporations" or anybody whatsoever not "paying their fair share". If you are paying 24-189% more than a couple of years ago, how can that increased amount NOT be your fair share? How in any way is it NOT greedy government? Fair question using fact based analysis. The D talking points are political misdirection.
http://dailysignal.com/2009/11/06/how-the-pelosi-plan-kills-jobs/
The IRS has penalties and interest that could be called usury in magnitude. The right they have given themselves to take assets to cover claimed taxes due with no notice or due process installed, reinforces the idea of debt slavery.cite Wikipedia Usary said:
http://www.supremelaw.org/copyrite/dasia.net/taxfree.htm
To requote myself for context,
me said:
Check this out.
http://www.econport.org/content/handbook/NatIncAccount/CalculatingGDP/Income.html
Income Approach to Calculating GDP
This approach calculates National Income, NI. NI is the sum of the following components:
Labor Income (W)
Rental Income (R)
Interest Income (i)
Profits (PR)
NI = W + R + i + PR
Labor Income (W):
Salaries, wages, and fringe benefits such as health or retirement. This also includes unemployment insurance and government taxes for Social Security.
Rental Income (R):
This is income received from property received by households. Royalties from patents, copyrights and assets as well as imputed rent are included.
Interest Income (i):
Income received by households through the lending of their money to corporations and business firms. Government and household interest payments are not included in the national income.
Profits (PR):
The amount firms have left after paying their rent, interest on debt, and employee compensation. GDP calculation involves accounting profit and not economic profit.
With that said, the Fed's response to the FEDGOV's approach of using debt funded stimulus spending rather than tax reduction to revive the economy, rather than the Fed increasing reliance on temporary liquidity programs was a choice. By setting interest rates at zero savers incomes were zeroed out overnight and for 9 years. The 186% increase on dividend taxes incented payers to pay less and receivers to have less to spend. That impact on Income GDP was meaningful and directly contributed to the reduction of velocity of money.
The other three categories, wages, rent and profit income was taxed an additional 24%-58%. That impact on Income GDP was meaningful and directly contributed to the reduction of velocity of money.
Because company income is taxed twice, once at the company level and once at the individual receiving it, that double taxation is subject to the increase in tax rates, so the net effect of that category is actually a 48-116% increase in taxation. That is obviously and directly hurtful to income. Government just squanders it.
Just the facts.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...pay-50-tax-rate.1968991/page-13#post-22837579
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Yep. Not just Obama, the House led by Democrats and Pelosi, and the Senate led by Democrats and Reid. So it is Democrats generally.
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I'm a dyed in the wool Berliner, nothing is ever going to move me from the world capital of atheism, nihilism and stoicism. In the last election the libertarian party here got 1.8% it's worst result ever. I guess that means we are fine with our tax level, it's all about having a government spending the money wisely. And the US government strikes me as particularly wasteful, even for western standards. Ever heard of something called the military-industrial complex? It would swallow every single tax dollar Apple could possibly pay and ask for a refill. Paying more taxes could be a very positive thing, but not where Woz lives. Sorry.
Okay, well, that's entirely false, so I guess I just won't continue with this one.
Perhaps education was the first thing that came to mind, but you literally could not have picked a worse point to use. When the states are setting up lotteries to pour "more money" into education and then the very next budget cycle, reducing tax dollars going to education because it has been replaced by the lottery... that is proof positive that you CANNOT trust the government with another significant revenue stream if it could be used more efficiently anywhere else.
And understand this... I'm not saying corporations shouldn't pay somewhat more on the whole. I am just saying that 50% is ludicrous. The government will give us no value-add on that money.
The Woz has been out of Apple for decades. I think he needs to sit back in his lounge chair and watch some TV and keep quiet.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has spoken out in favor of Apple and all other companies in the world paying the same 50% tax rate he does, calling anything less "unfair".
In an interview with the BBC published this morning, Wozniak, who left Apple in 1986, said that every company in the world should pay the same rate he pays as an individual. "I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50% of anything I make in taxes and I believe that's part of life and you should do it," he said.
Tax avoidance has been brought back into focus by the recent Panama Papers revelations, a huge leak of documents that lifted the lid on how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.
Asked about companies maximizing profit and the related issue of tax havens, Wozniak said he was personally never interested in making money, unlike his former partner, Steve Jobs. "Jobs started Apple Computers for money, that was his big thing and that was extremely important and critical and good," he said. "[But] we didn't think we'd be figuring out how to go off to the Bahamas and have special accounts like people do to try to hide their money."
"On the other hand," he continued, "any company that is a public company, its shareholders are going to force it to be as profitable as possible and that means financial people studying all the laws of the world and figuring out all the schemes that work that are technically legal. They're technically legal and it bothers me and I would not live my life that way."
Asked if he worried that Apple had moved so far away from its founding principles that it was now looking to actively pay less tax, Wozniak replied: "The company we founded in 1976 knew that we would be a worldwide company selling huge amounts of computers everywhere, and we just assumed we would pay taxes on it. And maybe the tax rates are different for a company than they are for a person, but that's something that bothers me to this day."
Apple is one of several multinational corporations that have been targeted for possible corporate tax avoidance in Europe. In September 2014, the European Commission formally accused it of receiving illegal state aid from Ireland, where it has reportedly paid a reduced tax rate of around 1.8% on its overseas profits.
In a March hearing at the European Parliament's tax committee, Apple claimed it was the "largest taxpayer in the world", in 2015 paying $13.2 billion in taxes worldwide at an effective tax rate of 36.4%.
Earlier this month, candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination for the United States, Bernie Sanders, said he wished Apple would stop trying not to pay its fair share of taxes and move some of its manufacturing to the U.S.
Tim Cook has previously said that Apple pays all of the taxes that it owes. In a December interview with Charlie Rose, he said accusations Apple avoids taxes on revenue held overseas is "total political crap". "There is no truth behind it," he said. "Apple pays every tax dollar we owe."
A decision in the European Commission's probe of Apple's tax affairs in Ireland is unlikely to be reached soon, according to EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, who told reporters querying its conclusion, "Don't hold your breath."
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Article Link: Steve Wozniak Says Apple Should Pay 50% Tax Rate
