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Jeez, an effective tax rate on profits in Ireland of 0.005% is pretty inexcusable.
by estel 10y ago
Jeez, an effective tax rate on profits in Ireland of 0.005% is pretty inexcusable.
- eru 10y agoWhy? 0% tax on profits would seem fair and reasonable. (There's lots of stuff that's not taxed. Eg not a lot of people complain about not taxing capital gains of home owner/occupiers.)
- Scirra_Tom 10y agoAnd how is 0% tax on profits fair and reasonable exactly?
- fulldecent 10y agoBecause all AAPL shareholders pay taxes on their pro-rata share of the company in the form of capital gains tax and dividends tax. Also, because this is a valid and consenting agreement between Apple and Ireland, two consenting adults.
- eru 10y agoIf you tax something, you get less of it. Either because you actually really get less of it, or because you encourage clever accounting. (Just look up Hollywood accounting..) People making profit isn't something we need to discourage. How about taxing CO2 emissions and eg alcohol consumption instead? (Something we can live with less off.) And the old classic: put most of the tax burden on unimproved land value. Land's supply is fixed, so there's no economic impact at all.
- piva00 10y agoActually people making ONLY profit is something we should discourage, people investing back their profits and sharing the pie with others is what should be encouraged.
- 7952 10y agoOr just tax the product through VAT for consumer facing companies.
- Oletros 10y agoAlcohol is already heavily taxed > People making profit isn't something we need to discourage. Who is discouraging it?
- eru 10y agoTaxes on profit discourage it.
- meira 10y agoPeople working is something we don't need discouraging, not people making profit of them. I hope apple has to pay it and must important, don't have another place to run.
- marcospri 10y agoBecause the Pub next door pays a higher effective tax
- eru 10y agoThey sell alcohol after all. But fair point. And because the bigger players who can hire expensive accountants can always mask their profits, we shouldn't tax profits. It's too malleable. Hey, even VAT is a better tax.
- notahacker 10y agoThe bigger players then avoid even more tax without the expensive accountants, with the burden falling upon everybody else, not least private companies whose owners are based locally and rely on taxable dividends for a living.
- eru 10y agoHow are they going to evade VAT or a land value tax?
- notahacker 10y agoWell, they could own virtually no land in Ireland and buy very few physical assets in Ireland (hang on, that's actually already the case for Apple; shame about anyone brave enough to be actually making stuff in Ireland though) Put another way, why should Irish businesses and consumers pay increased VAT and a new land tax so that Apple's profits can be tax free?
- k-mcgrady 10y agoIf you raised VAT even more they would just pass on the cost and make a fuss that it's the governments fault everything is suddenly more expensive. Politically it wouldn't work. If there was a way to globally set the price of a good at one level (iPhone = $400) and then each country could add tax after that so it's clear the company isn't passing the price on to the consumer in various countries with higher sales tax/VAT it might work well.
- tonicoto 10y ago0% tax on profits would be fair for whom? Definitely not the citizen.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoIt would be fine if you moved the tax to dividends and capital gains.
- estel 10y agoBecause other companies pay about 20%. If you want to completely reform our taxation system, sure, whatever. But that doesn't impact Apple's liability under the current one.