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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

Half of the joke was probably the Cupertino city council being jealous of Google providing free wifi for Mountain View.

Jobs has a good point about "paying taxes." In the last few years, a lot of people in the Bay Area outside tech are saying things like "why doesn't tech do more to build more housing." They pay taxes, and tech workers living in the cities are paying income and property taxes. The communities should be asking themselves why they, themselves, aren't building more housing. What did they think these added tax dollars should be going it?

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You don't even need tax dollars to build more housing, all you need is not NIMBYism.

Unfortunately the Bay Area has that in spades.

It exists everywhere

It is demonstrably worse in BA than in most other places in the US.

Places like Japan don't seem to have much of a problem with it at all.

Places like Japan have negative birthrates and restrictive immigration policies.

NIMBYism is a reaction to a sudden influx of newcomers to an area. As such, hot remote work spots like Bend, OR are very likely experiencing a similar NIMBYist mindset.

Tokyo has continuous growth, and almost no NIMBYism. While Japan as a whole has negative birthrates and restrictive immigration policies, Tokyo has neither.

The comment you’re responding to is a real, important difference between Japan’s response to growth (in the Tokyo area) and other cities and regions’ responses to growth. Handwaving it doesn’t help.

I'm curious what you think is the difference between Japan's response to growth versus other places. Given the fact that Japan zones on a federal vs local level, this already reduces the potential of NIMBYists blocking new development. However this does not mean that NIMBYism does not exist there.

It largely doesn’t exist there because they’re so monocultural. Zoning in the US was created explicitly to preserve racial divisions in neighborhoods.

Everyone important in the Bay Area already got theirs. If you're important enough, eventually you will get yours too.

NIMBYism is great if you're a somebody.

Yes, in communities like Cupertino, the cities themselves are downright hostile to housing: https://medium.com/yimby/the-latest-on-vallco-explained-9d37...

When the planning commission of a city likens housing advocacy to "an onslaught of anarchists and YIMBY Neoliberal fascists", rational process has pretty much broken down.

"We pay our taxes" sounds a bit disingenuous from a company that is famous for aggressively offshoring its profits to avoid paying US and California taxes, the latter of which would directly contribute to local housing programs.

Apple's effective worldwide tax rate is ~25%, which is actually slightly higher than other US multinationals. That is also not counting taxes on income/capital gains paid by California employees, which are obviously pretty sizable.

"Apple’s effective U.S. federal income tax rate was just 7.3% in 2011. Apple claimed its tax rate in 2011 was 24.2%, one-third less than the official tax rate of 35%. But the Senate subcommittee found its rate was no more than 20.1%, allowing "Apple to claim credit for $3 billion of deferred taxes on overseas income that are not owed until the profits are brought back to the United States. Since Apple has said that is not likely to happen, its effective tax rate in 2011 was just 7.3% – $2.5 billion in taxes actually paid against $34.2 billion of income before taxes. [Exhibit 1a, pp. 38-39]"[0]

[0] https://americansfortaxfairness.org/issues/corporate-taxes/h...

Normally, I'd say that actually cheats the federal government out of tax revenue (for now), but Apple actually is incorporated in California, not Delaware, and California has various corporate taxes.

That said, it doesn't make sense for the global profits of a company like Apple to get taxed in California or Cupertino. The accounting isn't necessarily easy, but it makes more sense to tax where was money was made (which is murky and complicated) than to funnel it all to the HQ; Apple is more than just a spaceship in one city.

This isn't to say Apple isn't doing things to avoid paying taxes, either. My point is that using corporate taxes of a company with global sales to solve local issues doesn't make sense.

Apple's marketing is that the money is made in California. Designed by Apple in California has long appeared as a feel good on their products that are assembled overseas.

I would point you to all that cash sitting offshore that they can't repatriate back to the US, and can't seem to find productive use for in the countries where it sits. That is the direct result of tax planning. I haven't been keeping up with the cases, but I know Amazon won, and Coca-cola just lost, not sure where Apple's cases are in tax court. Hopefully they aren't an EY audit/tax client.

Okay. My belief is that their marketing is more indicative of their ethos than their tax planning though.

They are in fact an EY client (as is Coke). Not sure about Amazon

But Apple doesn't exactly have a history of "paying taxes".

Sure it does -- Apple's effective worldwide tax rate is ~25%. Like every US multinational, Apple structure themselves to optimize their tax burden, but it's not like they "have a history of not paying taxes".

you're on a tear posting this at face value

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