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"Apple Plans to Pay $38 Billion in Repatriation Taxes. " Imagine headline like this under Obama, how much praise he would get.

by mudil 9y ago

matthewmcg 9y ago
You could also write the headline as "Most Profitable Company on Earth To Receive $42B Repatriation Tax Break"
- coolso 9y ago
  By the same token you could also rewrite a lot of comments in this thread, possibly including yours, as "Trump's Tax Bill Is Having Positive Effects Despite The Narrative And I Don't Like That".
- adventured 9y ago
  That money was never coming back otherwise. So no, you couldn't reasonably write that. You'd have to enter an alternate reality where US corporations like Apple voluntarily paid the backwards, high US global profit tax.
  - ejstronge 9y ago
    This doesn't quite make sense - the decision/cost to bring the money 'into the US' depends on a variety of factors. I am not a domain expert, but the availability of cheap credit must have been a principal consideration, as well as the knowledge that a potential Republican president would offer an effective repatriation holiday. In short, there are many conceivable situations in which it might make sense to pay such a tax - we're just not in one of those at the moment. I won't address your last assertion, not having data, but I've read in many publications that the effective corporate tax rates in the US are far lower than rates in other countries.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > the decision/cost to bring the money 'into the US' depends on a variety of factors No it doesn't. Apple has been lobbying aggressively for years, including during most of the Obama Administration, to change the backwards US global tax policy (the US being one of the few countries to utilize such an approach) and or to arrange a one-time repatriation holiday. They finally got what they wanted and they're repatriating the money immediately thereafter. It depended on one thing: getting a low enough rate to make bringing the cash home modestly punishing. Apple was always clear about that, Tim Cook spelled it out in numerous interviews over several years.
      - jasonlotito 9y ago
        Sure, and the issue wasn't whether it would happen, it was what the money would be used for. Republicans and Democrats wanted different things. The tax policy was going to change. It was just a matter of what we did with it. In this case, it was used to pay for lower taxes for corporations.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tootie 9y ago
It's a great headline. The tax bill be a net loss of $1T for government coffers over 10 years though so it's grossly misleading.
dmode 9y ago
During the Obama years, economy went from 10% unemployment to 4%, yet all I heard from the conservative press on how bad things are.
- makomk 9y ago
  Remember those articles after the election about how researchers found that pretty much all of the net jobs created since 2005 were temporary, contract work, gig economy or other such insecure short-term non-traditional employment? For instance, https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-since-2005-are-temporary/ https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created... Think carefully about what that means for the Obama years, and what it says about all the people who insisted those headline unemployment figures were iron-clad, indisputable proof that things were getting better and that anyone who claimed otherwise was simply lying.

"Apple Plans to Pay $38 Billion in Repatriation Taxes. " Imagine headline like this under Obama, how much praise he would get.

by mudil 9y ago

"Apple Plans to Pay $38 Billion in Repatriation Taxes. " Imagine headline like this under Obama, how much praise he would get.

matthewmcg 9y ago

You could also write the headline as "Most Profitable Company on Earth To Receive $42B Repatriation Tax Break"

coolso 9y ago
By the same token you could also rewrite a lot of comments in this thread, possibly including yours, as "Trump's Tax Bill Is Having Positive Effects Despite The Narrative And I Don't Like That".
adventured 9y ago
That money was never coming back otherwise. So no, you couldn't reasonably write that. You'd have to enter an alternate reality where US corporations like Apple voluntarily paid the backwards, high US global profit tax.
- ejstronge 9y ago
  This doesn't quite make sense - the decision/cost to bring the money 'into the US' depends on a variety of factors. I am not a domain expert, but the availability of cheap credit must have been a principal consideration, as well as the knowledge that a potential Republican president would offer an effective repatriation holiday. In short, there are many conceivable situations in which it might make sense to pay such a tax - we're just not in one of those at the moment. I won't address your last assertion, not having data, but I've read in many publications that the effective corporate tax rates in the US are far lower than rates in other countries.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > the decision/cost to bring the money 'into the US' depends on a variety of factors No it doesn't. Apple has been lobbying aggressively for years, including during most of the Obama Administration, to change the backwards US global tax policy (the US being one of the few countries to utilize such an approach) and or to arrange a one-time repatriation holiday. They finally got what they wanted and they're repatriating the money immediately thereafter. It depended on one thing: getting a low enough rate to make bringing the cash home modestly punishing. Apple was always clear about that, Tim Cook spelled it out in numerous interviews over several years.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      Sure, and the issue wasn't whether it would happen, it was what the money would be used for. Republicans and Democrats wanted different things. The tax policy was going to change. It was just a matter of what we did with it. In this case, it was used to pay for lower taxes for corporations.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tootie 9y ago

It's a great headline. The tax bill be a net loss of $1T for government coffers over 10 years though so it's grossly misleading.

dmode 9y ago

During the Obama years, economy went from 10% unemployment to 4%, yet all I heard from the conservative press on how bad things are.

makomk 9y ago
Remember those articles after the election about how researchers found that pretty much all of the net jobs created since 2005 were temporary, contract work, gig economy or other such insecure short-term non-traditional employment? For instance, https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-since-2005-are-temporary/ https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created... Think carefully about what that means for the Obama years, and what it says about all the people who insisted those headline unemployment figures were iron-clad, indisputable proof that things were getting better and that anyone who claimed otherwise was simply lying.