Tim Cook "Not Religious" About Holding Cash; 66% of Apple's $81B in Cash is Held Overseas

[dr34mc4st3r]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Not eveybody cares to brag about what the donate or give to charities. Some people don't do it to get attention and prefer to not have it public at all.

But Apple gives sometimes too: http://www.google.com/search?q=appl....,cf.osb&fp=fe49d561ad75bea3&biw=1152&bih=669

Just look over a few pages and see the different things it gave to.

Um....$250k in 1987. Thanks, Apple.

As for the 9000 free iPads...whatever...might as well have given away iPods or free copies of OSX.

You do realize that giving away PRODUCT is a big write-off for them...and also considered a "promo" or other marketing jargon that gets buried in the budgets.

I appreciate your reply, but I still think Apple is extremely stingy.

Remind me again the purpose of doing a business?

 

[4nNtt]

We all tout Apple as a company that revolutionizes everything they touch... maybe it's time for Apple to not be "every company" in terms of bringing money back to the US economy?

Why should they? There is no reason to bring it back unless they want to spend it.

 

[KPOM]

What a joke Apple are and half the posters here.
I pay taxes...so why not these fat cats. If you really think if it comes back here it will get invested in the USA....you must be on crack!!!
They wil pay themselves a huge amount and the rest will go to foreign concerns...read China.
Amazing how companies like Apple want to use our roads, police force etc etc but sure don't like paying their fair share.
But hey...who cares as long as their stock price keeps climbing eh
Let them (us) eat cake!!!!!!

Actually, that money currently gets reinvested in China and elsewhere precisely because Apple can't bring that money back in the US without paying taxes on it. As long as they keep that money in China, supporting the Chinese economy, they aren't taxed on it. If they wanted to use that money to build a big new plant in California, they'd be taxed.

Please support your statement with which companies in the United States currently pay a 35% tax rate. Second, please compare the effective rate with other G8 industrialized nations. You might be surprised.

I'm not pro-tax, I'm just anti-ignorance.

35% is the statutory rate. Sure, if companies keep foreign income overseas they don't pay additional taxes on it, but a big part of the reason they keep that money overseas is that they would owe a lot of taxes if they did. Remember, if they pay dividends, recipients pay taxes on that, so it winds up getting double taxed.

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What disadvantage? If the company needs to expand its business abroad it can. Nobody is going to tax them. It's only profits that get taxed. Sure, as a result american investors will get less and government will get more. Nothing wrong with that for we need to support our elderly, our army etc.

They are disadvantaged in that they can't use overseas profits to build up domestic operations, or to pay dividends to domestic shareholders without incurring additional tax liability. Foreign corporations can use income they earn outside their home countries to build up their domestic operations.

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Seriously folks, step away from the kool aid. Unless you studied finance, please read up before you post. This situation has nothing to do with double taxation.

The companies are pushing to reprise the 2004 holiday that allowed them to bring home offshore earnings at a low tax rate of 5.25 percent. Under that break, companies repatriated to the U.S. $312 billion, largely for stock repurchases rather than direct hiring or investment, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Finance, the latest in a series of studies that reached similar conclusions.

The proposed holiday would reward the companies that have most aggressively parked profits in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, said Martin A. Sullivan, a former Treasury Department economist and contributing editor for the non-partisan Tax Notes.

“A lot of what companies report as foreign profit is really U.S. profit that should be subject to U.S. tax,” Sullivan said. “Those earnings didn’t get overseas by accident. Many of these companies intentionally put them there to avoid paying U.S. taxes.”

Agreed, but the real solution isn't a tax holiday, it's a permanent reduction of the corporate tax rate combined with an elimination of the loopholes. Without getting into the politics of it, that's essentially what the third "9" in a certain presidential candidate's tax plan is. Let's just tax the gross US receipts of US corporations at a low rate and be done with it. We can keep the US competitive while avoiding situations such as GE earning billions but paying little to no tax.

 

[OceanView]

If they want a tax low rate, they must create jobs in the US as part of the deal otherwise tax them like the rest of us.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

If they want a tax low rate, they must create jobs in the US as part of the deal otherwise tax them like the rest of us.

Or just keep taxes generally low and leave everyone alone. You don't coerce companies into "creating jobs". Companies create exactly the number of jobs they need.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I don't man...all I do know is that we used to manufacture goods in this country and we were just fine.

Nice logic. Detroit had that same idea when all the Japanese imports were eating them for lunch in the 1980s and they refused to adapt. IBM use to make just mainframes and owned the market but they were faster to the draw than the U.S. car makers when they saw competition and changing needs. Imagine if IBM thought they could survive just on mainframes going into the 1980s. They'd be out of biz today. Times change. Competition, technology, global competitiveness rewrite the rules. You can shout USA! USA! all you want but it doesn't change the fact the world is a smaller place than it was back when U.S. manufacturing was peaking in the 1950s and 1960s. Sorry guy, it's 2011.

 

[nylonsteel]

re "...as Horace Dediu points out..."

gotta love the name - horace dediu

smart analyst with a great name - horace dediu

will name one of my cats - horace dediu

 

[baruch]

Give back

It's bad for the global economy for here to be money stashes this large. Money is valuable when it's in circulation, not when it's sitting. Apple has made all this money from us. Maybe it's time for them to give back in some really big ways. $81 billion? How about committing even a fourth of that to creating green energy infrastructure, or desert reclamation projects or any number of other things that the world needs. Hey Apple, time to step up.

 

[GovtLawyer]

Occupy Wall St

Today's dialogue, a la the Occupy Wall Streeters, surrounds American Greed. Suppose Apple built their products in the USA! They make a high percentage in China. Well, it would probably cost them more money to do so. What would they do then? Raise the price of their products? Probably not as they are already priced at a premium. Of course, they could take less profit, keep the work and jobs in the USA, and still be very profitable and make the shareholders wealthy.

Apple would never do that! American Greed! Make as much as they can, damn the American worker, and keep as much of their profits away from taxes.

I love Apple products, but they would walk over anyone in their way of raising their cash-on-hand another few billions. American greed. Greedy Wall Streeters and greedy corporations.

 

[KPOM]

It's bad for the global economy for here to be money stashes this large. Money is valuable when it's in circulation, not when it's sitting. Apple has made all this money from us. Maybe it's time for them to give back in some really big ways. $81 billion? How about committing even a fourth of that to creating green energy infrastructure, or desert reclamation projects or any number of other things that the world needs. Hey Apple, time to step up.

Apple has that money in investments, including government bonds. That money isn't idle. It's financing the borrowings of companies and government. That said, perhaps it should be in different, more productive investments (e.g. other companies).

 

[bretm]

Yup. Apple would have to pay about $12B in taxes if they brought that money into the U.S.

Well, not really. Corporations don't pay taxes. Their customers do. Cause and effect: remove those corporate taxes and watch prices go down due to competitive forces. Econ 101.

Now, given that, who would you rather have/spend that money? The govt who will give it away in failed programs or bailouts, or Apple who will grow the economy, hiring people, selling products, designing, growing the company for investors, etc.

 

[Juan007]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

That money doesn't belong to the US government. It belongs to Apple shareholders, among them Apple employees and the estate of Steve Jobs.

Think Apple doesn't help the American worker? Come visit Cupertino, a city built on the wealth of Apple. Thousands of Apple employees got rich in recent years. They have made their employees millionaires. You can't even buy a decent house in Cupertino for under a million due to the huge demand from rich Apple employees.

 

[OceanView]

Or just keep taxes generally low and leave everyone alone. You don't coerce companies into "creating jobs". Companies create exactly the number of jobs they need.

The thing is, they removed manufacturing jobs and created them elsewhere.
So if they don't want to bring jobs back, then just pay your taxes like the rest of the people do in the US and stop skirting the laws to your benefit.

 

[geppetto425]

Pay the 99% more!

Holy crap, with all that money you would think they could afford to pay all those workers in foreign sweat shops more money. Come on, you didn't think all those iPads, iPhones and nanos were made in the US did you??

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Today's dialogue, a la the Occupy Wall Streeters, surrounds American Greed. Suppose Apple built their products in the USA! They make a high percentage in China. Well, it would probably cost them more money to do so. What would they do then? Raise the price of their products? Probably not as they are already priced at a premium. Of course, they could take less profit, keep the work and jobs in the USA, and still be very profitable and make the shareholders wealthy.

Apple would never do that! American Greed! Make as much as they can, damn the American worker, and keep as much of their profits away from taxes.

I love Apple products, but they would walk over anyone in their way of raising their cash-on-hand another few billions. American greed. Greedy Wall Streeters and greedy corporations.

Your forum name speaks to your business knowledge, or lack thereof. Take a look at Dell, HP, some of the other low margin companies. They are gasping for life, make pretty lousy products and still have to make their products in China. If they were still made in the U.S. they'd be out of biz b/c the slim margins they make now would be gobbled up by additional regulation and higher labor costs.

Again, none of the U.S. companies shuttered their U.S. factories because they wanted to, but because they had to. It's not greed, it's survival. In fact the last light bulb factory in the U.S was shuttered last year effectively by legislation.

 

[jimbobb24]

So you would rather they not pay taxes on earnings?

Of course! Would you rather they pay taxes on their earnings?

 

[jimbobb24]

Today's dialogue, a la the Occupy Wall Streeters, surrounds American Greed. Suppose Apple built their products in the USA! They make a high percentage in China. Well, it would probably cost them more money to do so. What would they do then? Raise the price of their products? Probably not as they are already priced at a premium. Of course, they could take less profit, keep the work and jobs in the USA, and still be very profitable and make the shareholders wealthy.

Apple would never do that! American Greed! Make as much as they can, damn the American worker, and keep as much of their profits away from taxes.

I love Apple products, but they would walk over anyone in their way of raising their cash-on-hand another few billions. American greed. Greedy Wall Streeters and greedy corporations.

Greed...oh boy its another failure of modern education. Politics aside, why can't people think beyond slogans anymore?

Why do you assume that Apple could remain profitable if they moved everything back in the US? Because you wave your hand and say they will. Neat. It must be greed, not a careful analysis of risks and benefits. No... greed. People won't give us jobs because of greed.

Maybe American workers are greedy because they want to make more than Chinese workers. AMERICAN GREED. Why are American workers so GREEDY? Why are Chinese workers so less greedy. Why are American politicians so GREEDY! Why do they want so more money! Greed. Why are Chinese politicians so much less greedy.

Seems to me everyone is equally greedy, so we can drop greed out of the equation and go forward with thinking about real problems, like why can't the Vikings win?

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I don't man...all I do know is that we used to manufacture goods in this country and we were just fine.

You listen to politicians too much. Outside of very recent economic downturn, we are a manufacturing powerhouse in the US. We make crazy amounts of stuff and per capita are the top manufacturing economy in the world (or maybe top three - can't remember).

What has changed in manufacturing jobs in the US are way down because we replaced people with technology. So that those people could go to college for a few years and then spend their time occupying wall street instead of working a factory job. Thats called progress, more manufacturing with less people! Horray!

 

[Cruzer442]

Don't bother arguing with the #OWS crowd. They are 60% Socialist, 10% Communist and 100% ******* crazy.

It amazes me how many people don't understand that publicly held companies are owned by the... public.

I'm not a fan of a tax-holiday though. I'm more for permanent solutions.

 

[kiljoy616]

It's too bad that the American tax system incentivises not bringing the money back into the United States.

Maybe its because they are not suppose to do that. Maybe that why workers as fools pay so much tax which is why investor don't as well as those who know how to use the system when it comes to finding all those juicy deductible.

If government gave them a holiday its not like that money will be seen buy you or society and as any good Capitalist would do, they would start to do the same thing again as soon as the holiday was done. I personally don't like or pay my fair share of taxes but why should I its all legal so why give it to society when I can buy even more toys.

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Don't bother arguing with the #OWS crowd. They are 60% Socialist, 10% Communist and 100% ******* crazy.

It amazes me how many people don't understand that publicly held companies are owned by the... public.

I'm not a fan of a tax-holiday though. I'm more for permanent solutions.

Oh do you own any I do and at this time I am doing just fine with the investor solution. But I am sure your in the same boat I am. So wealth should not be a problem for you.

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Funny how the U.S. can tax revenue that never actually existed in the U.S. Gotta love "repatriation!"

Yes is that not so interesting just like those same company worker and executives get the benefit of been safe to make money without having their head removed from their ass.

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Greed...oh boy its another failure of modern education. Politics aside, why can't people think beyond slogans anymore?

Why do you assume that Apple could remain profitable if they moved everything back in the US? Because you wave your hand and say they will. Neat. It must be greed, not a careful analysis of risks and benefits. No... greed. People won't give us jobs because of greed.

Maybe American workers are greedy because they want to make more than Chinese workers. AMERICAN GREED. Why are American workers so GREEDY? Why are Chinese workers so less greedy. Why are American politicians so GREEDY! Why do they want so more money! Greed. Why are Chinese politicians so much less greedy.

Seems to me everyone is equally greedy, so we can drop greed out of the equation and go forward with thinking about real problems, like why can't the Vikings win?

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You listen to politicians too much. Outside of very recent economic downturn, we are a manufacturing powerhouse in the US. We make crazy amounts of stuff and per capita are the top manufacturing economy in the world (or maybe top three - can't remember).

What has changed in manufacturing jobs in the US are way down because we replaced people with technology. So that those people could go to college for a few years and then spend their time occupying wall street instead of working a factory job. Thats called progress, more manufacturing with less people! Horray!

Just wait another decade and you should not even know what happen to so many jobs, which should be terrible for those who are not making money the right new way.

 

[pcmike]

You are so clueless it's laughable.

I bought a camera in Hong Kong and had to pay import taxes at the US custom when I returned home. Why Apple should have a free run? Obama should tax them up to 50% for cash stored outside US, that's how you will convince them to move the money here. Apple ($$$) do not care about patriotism, they have slaves in china to produce the toys for you to enjoy. A lot of people died there regularly for it. It all about profits. Open your eyes, they are just like Exxon or Chase.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Erm, why would "repatriation" (the "re" doesn't really belong here) lead to it being invested in the US or even "Made in USA" Apple gear ?

They sure have enough cash in the USA allready to build dozen of factories, if that was what they wanted

 

[unlinked]

Well, not really. Corporations don't pay taxes. Their customers do. Cause and effect: remove those corporate taxes and watch prices go down due to competitive forces. Econ 101.

Now, given that, who would you rather have/spend that money? The govt who will give it away in failed programs or bailouts, or Apple who will grow the economy, hiring people, selling products, designing, growing the company for investors, etc.

Customers don't pay taxes the companies that employ them do.

 

[henchman]

Not eveybody cares to brag about what the donate or give to charities. Some people don't do it to get attention and prefer to not have it public at all.

But Apple gives sometimes too: http://www.google.com/search?q=appl....,cf.osb&fp=fe49d561ad75bea3&biw=1152&bih=669

Just look over a few pages and see the different things it gave to.

They give away old stock,of old products, so they can write off maximum value. This way they get yet another great tax break.
Because they can wrte off the wholesale price, not what it cost them.
Thats why they don't actually gve money.

 

[AwakenedLands]

Apple "taxes" a third of all App Store purchases but won't give a third of their income to the govt in taxes.

 

[neutrino23]

It's not a double taxation. They do not have to pay full US tax but only the difference between local and US tax. So do all of us U.S. citizens.

Better than that. Apple does not pay the 35% rate bandied about here. I doubt any company does. That is the rate before they start applying legal deductions. Apple has mentioned many times that their effective rate is about 25%.