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Apple cannot exist outside of the "ecosystem" of infrastructure and institutions maintained by the State, i.e. ordinary taxpayers. Good luck getting your iPhone
by gaius 9y ago
Apple cannot exist outside of the "ecosystem" of infrastructure and institutions maintained by the State, i.e. ordinary taxpayers. Good luck getting your iPhone without roads, or keeping it without a police force. Tax evading companies like Apple and Google justify it by claiming that they create value in a vacuum, so should keep all of it.
- bunderbunder 9y agoOr, maybe more directly to the point in this case, a communications regulator to control radio spectrum usage, in order to ensure that slices of spectrum are carved out for specific uses, and protected from excessive interference resulting from other uses. Y'know, the regulation that makes the ubiquitous and reliable microwave, cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth communications that these companies' products rely on to be useful possible in the first place.
- peoplewindow 9y agoPolice and roads aren't services provided to Apple. They're services provided to you. I've never once seen a corporation travelling down a road - has anyone else? The only government services corporations specifically use re legal services like courts and patent offices. Those have fees attached and in the USA the PTO is actually a profit center, so tax is irrelevant. There's no moral argument for taxing artificial social constructs like corporations.
- gaius 9y agoTee hee, do iPhones teleport all the way from China into your hand then?
- peoplewindow 9y agoThey fly here. On privately built and owned planes. They are then moved a short distance by trucks that pay for their own road costs via fuel taxes and tolls. Finally, I drive to the shop, paying my own taxes along the way to pick one up. At no point is corporation tax paying any part in the transport of goods like iPhones.
- baublet 9y agoThey are shipped here over sea lanes made safe by the trillions the US and other countries pay to make them safe; to fly in airspace made safe and regulated by those same countries; to be shipped to individual stores over roads built and maintained by taxpayer dollars that allow such wide open shipping lanes; allowed to move from truck to store and stay in said store before the point of sale to me and other buyers safely by a police force also paid for by taxpayers.
- d393k02397 9y ago>what is import tax >what is road tax >what is sales tax