Apple designs an iPhone, has it produced in China, sold to Apple HK, then sold to Germany.
Profit margin in China by Foxcon? Small Profit margin in the offshore jurisdiction (e.g. Hongkong). Big. Taxes in HK for this transaction: Zero
This transaction also does not show up in the US trade balance. ("Black matter in accounting")
For example: Between 2014 and 2017 Apple paid $35 billion in taxes.
While you can argue they should pay more in taxes, the fact is they pay vastly more than their peers. Amazon in particular is notoriously good at keeping their tax bills low.
I don't know what is fair in terms of taxes and I'm not suggesting Apple is a perfect tax citizen, but they do pay a good chunk of cash out to keep the White House lights on.
https://observer.com/2019/09/apple-ireland-tax-lawsuit-europ...
1. I don't know why I get downvoted
2. I would not say a corporate tax rate of 0.005% is high.
This is on public record: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/total-p...
> I would not say a corporate tax rate of 0.005% is high.
I'm not sure what that number comes from so I can't say, but since they paid $10b/ year for the past 9+ years, they'd have to have 2 trillion dollars in profit in a single year for that rate to be accurate.