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Comment by repomies691 | Hacker News Reader

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whether it pays taxes or not.

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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 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.

Or, 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.

Police 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.

Tee hee, do iPhones teleport all the way from China into your hand then?

They 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.

They 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.

Think about it this way, if I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes. They hurt innovation. And that money is supposed to go to governments to use, which it doesn't, hampering the ability for others to thrive. Now there's is less competition

> I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes.

why would that happen? unless apple uses their tax dodged profits to directly prevent you from operating, which would be illegal to do in the first place.

It wouldn't have to be direct to have an effect. If their reduced taxes causes education to be underfunded, I cannot hire enough talented engineers, for example.

Apple is the biggest taxpayer in the world. It pays every bit of tax it owes. It should be taxed less, not more. Corporate income taxes are corrosive to maintaining our society.

I'm not going to argue whether or not it pays all the taxes it owes. I'm pointing out that if they have access to offshore accounts that most businesses can't, they gain an unfair advantage over those other businesses. If you want to remove corporate income taxes, it should happen at the same time, not selectively to larger corporations.

They don't "have access to offshore accounts that most businesses don't". They naturally earn most of their profits internationally, and pay taxes to the countries they earn those profits in. If they return those international profits to the US, they'll lose another 40%+ to taxes (closer to 60% if you count individual dividend taxes).

So they keep the remaining profits in the lowest tax country/location they can find while it earns interest. They owe Germany nothing more.

Wow, "Let them eat cake" is the first thing that sprang into my mind upon reading your comment. Yes, having good phones and laptops surely is something great.

But we're talking here about a vast and growing gap between the rich and the poor, and if you're slaving away in your shit-town on your minimum wage job you don't give a damn about how awesome your life is now thanks to the iPhone.

> slaving away in your shit-town on your minimum wage job

but does that have anything to do with coporate tax dodge? Or is that really a failure in education (which may be due to tax dodges in-so-far as the lack of education funding)?

Hmm, Apple should probably stop paying any wages to any factory workers and force them to sleep in the factory and work 18hrs a day. As long as they keep making those nice phones and laptops...

I mean I guess it would be better if they didn't do that, but then again have you seen the next competetors laptop? The world would be a worse place if we had to use that.

I use normal computers and they work just fine. I see some colleagues using Apple computers and it doesn't always work for them. The world would be as normal as it is without apple products please.

Apple isn't increasing suffering by creating laptops. They are increasing suffering by not paying taxes. It is possible to enrich lives of some people, and increase suffering if others at the same time.

They are the biggest taxpayer in the world. By all rights they should pay less taxes, the current tax rate on Apple profits is over 60%.

I think he is talking about the big impact large companies have on climate change (due to products and product parts transportation), for example. Also the fact that a lot of phone's components are made from minerals that fuel conflicts in third world countries. A small company like FairPhone, which tries to combat that, can't evade taxes like Apple do...

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