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Yes and no. 15k hardware is for people who are using it professionally. By "professionally" I mean that they can throw such purchase into their cost and just pa

Yes and no. 15k hardware is for people who are using it professionally. By "professionally" I mean that they can throw such purchase into their cost and just pay less tax. From my perspective it does not matter if I pay ~15k to tax office or to Apple. In Europe the incentives to buy expensive goods as a company (like cars, fancy office furniture, etc.) is even bigger because of VAT tax (much bigger than US sales tax).

michaelmrose 6y ago
That just isn't how taxes work. If you spend 15k of your profits and buy capital goods you don't reduce your taxes by 15k because no one was going to charge you 100% tax on it. You save only the foregone taxes rate on the purchase.
- PixyMisa 6y ago
  And depreciation.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Of you can put your heavy workloads on the cloud and pass it as opex.
    - mpfundstein 6y ago
      which is the way to go
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        It depends. If it's a constant workload, it may be better to lease the server and operate it on-prem. If it's spiky, then cloud and on-demand/spot is the best option.
Hamuko 6y ago
I'm not sure if a VAT (Value Added Tax) deduction is gonna save anyone's Christmas considering the base Mac Pro is 5320 EUR (6 333 USD) tax-free.
Nursie 6y ago
You can get the VAT off, sure, but on the rest you just get to pay out of pre-tax profit. In the UK that means 20%. So a machine that's £5k retail becomes £4167 without VAT, effectively £3333 if you take into account tax savings, which only apply if your company is in profit. A £15K machine effectively would still cost you £10k. It's a big saving, sure, but it's still a very expensive machine.
- auggierose 6y ago
  Some people pay more than 20% tax. At 50% tax the savings look pretty good.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    That tax rate is corporation tax, not a personal tax. Does any European country have a 50% corporation tax? You're right if you start looking at "Well I run my own company so the cost compared to paying myself that cash as a dividend is much smaller", but that only really applies to those of us who do run our own small companies, own them fully and run them profitably, and have already pumped their personal earnings up to that level. And then we're on to a question about what that box is for and why it's needed, is it a company asset or a personal one? And remember that you get to apply the same percentage discount to any other machine - your 15K apple box may come down to a conceptual £5K hit on your pocket, if you're paying 50% personal tax on top of the company taxes, but a £4-5k Zen 3 box with dual nvidia 3090s in it will come in at £1333-£1600 by the same metric and quite likely perform better...
    - auggierose 6y ago
      If you can run your business on a Zen box with an Nvidia 3090 in it, good for you!
      - Nursie 6y ago
        I mean, if you're not running macos-specific stuff, then a top-end Zen3 box with a couple of 3090s in it is going to have more grunt than a 15k mac pro with a Xeon and a Vega II Duo. But I wasn't really here to talk about comparative value anyway - this was a tax discussion!
DanBC 6y ago
Doesn't this mean that you cannot use the computer for personal use, or that you can only reclaim the business-use proportion of that VAT?
- Nursie 6y ago
  Strictly speaking, yes, there is the expectation that the machine is used entirely for business purposes, if the business is paying for it, otherwise it might be considered a benefit in kind. It's not so much about VAT then as PAYE. However I feel no particular guilt that the workstation I use for my full-time dev day-job also has a windows partition for gaming in the evening, and I hope that the tax authorities would see things the same way! It's not like the asset isn't a justified business purchase.

michaelmrose 6y ago

That just isn't how taxes work. If you spend 15k of your profits and buy capital goods you don't reduce your taxes by 15k because no one was going to charge you 100% tax on it. You save only the foregone taxes rate on the purchase.

PixyMisa 6y ago
And depreciation.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Of you can put your heavy workloads on the cloud and pass it as opex.
  - mpfundstein 6y ago
    which is the way to go
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      It depends. If it's a constant workload, it may be better to lease the server and operate it on-prem. If it's spiky, then cloud and on-demand/spot is the best option.

Hamuko 6y ago

I'm not sure if a VAT (Value Added Tax) deduction is gonna save anyone's Christmas considering the base Mac Pro is 5320 EUR (6 333 USD) tax-free.

Nursie 6y ago

You can get the VAT off, sure, but on the rest you just get to pay out of pre-tax profit. In the UK that means 20%. So a machine that's £5k retail becomes £4167 without VAT, effectively £3333 if you take into account tax savings, which only apply if your company is in profit. A £15K machine effectively would still cost you £10k. It's a big saving, sure, but it's still a very expensive machine.

auggierose 6y ago
Some people pay more than 20% tax. At 50% tax the savings look pretty good.
- Nursie 6y ago
  That tax rate is corporation tax, not a personal tax. Does any European country have a 50% corporation tax? You're right if you start looking at "Well I run my own company so the cost compared to paying myself that cash as a dividend is much smaller", but that only really applies to those of us who do run our own small companies, own them fully and run them profitably, and have already pumped their personal earnings up to that level. And then we're on to a question about what that box is for and why it's needed, is it a company asset or a personal one? And remember that you get to apply the same percentage discount to any other machine - your 15K apple box may come down to a conceptual £5K hit on your pocket, if you're paying 50% personal tax on top of the company taxes, but a £4-5k Zen 3 box with dual nvidia 3090s in it will come in at £1333-£1600 by the same metric and quite likely perform better...
  - auggierose 6y ago
    If you can run your business on a Zen box with an Nvidia 3090 in it, good for you!
    - Nursie 6y ago
      I mean, if you're not running macos-specific stuff, then a top-end Zen3 box with a couple of 3090s in it is going to have more grunt than a 15k mac pro with a Xeon and a Vega II Duo. But I wasn't really here to talk about comparative value anyway - this was a tax discussion!

DanBC 6y ago

Doesn't this mean that you cannot use the computer for personal use, or that you can only reclaim the business-use proportion of that VAT?

Nursie 6y ago
Strictly speaking, yes, there is the expectation that the machine is used entirely for business purposes, if the business is paying for it, otherwise it might be considered a benefit in kind. It's not so much about VAT then as PAYE. However I feel no particular guilt that the workstation I use for my full-time dev day-job also has a windows partition for gaming in the evening, and I hope that the tax authorities would see things the same way! It's not like the asset isn't a justified business purchase.