You thought that times article was entertainment? It seemed to touch the major tax issues to me. Bottom line, individuals don't get these kind of tax relief options
Small companies, and individuals without clever accountants, miss out on those benefits.
Since companies benefit from the advantages of the nation state in which they're based (rule of law, policing (often protecting their products) roads, etc etc) they should make an effort to pay reasonable taxes.
At the end of the day, we've got bills to pay, and any deviation from "everyone pays a fair share" should have the burden of proving it's worth it.
That means they gave that money to someone else, and perhaps they are hiring, or perhaps they in turn invested it again.
"The cash probably goes somewhere" isn't that convincing. I'm not saying that companies should hire with extra cash if they don't need the employees. That would be a bad business decision. I'm just saying that "cash sitting on the sidelines = probably employment somewhere" isn't a great justification for them paying less taxes than I do. I work too, you know.
Correct, but you should also consider that creating a company creating jobs also adds another tax payer to the economy.
> should have the burden of proving it's worth it.
That is actually the whole point. The impact of consumption (purchasing power) will over time (if increasing) make it reasonable for companies who experiences these demands, to hire more employees to follow. How does that deviate from the idea of lowering tax so that the companies have incentives to create these jobs in the first place? Imagine the tax is twice as high (which, in most countries, is equal to the max taxation of indivduals). If that increase causes the company to only hire one (or none) employees, how would that be benificial? The new jobs would provide more tax revenue to the government, keeping in mind there's still the tax which the company pays, and the two tax filings by the job holders.
But to your point, let's say both coorporations and individuals pay the low income tax. I'll try to say this the least synical way I can: there is a trade off between working and leisure. People (in general) would work less, which is not desirable if you're trying to maximize tax revenue.
Overall, what I'm trying to convey is that consumption and company tax rates are combined means to a goal - tax revenue.
What I question in your post is how stimulated demand creates more jobs if there's a shortage of employees due to people not needing to work as much.
So how are they not paying their "fair share"? Perhaps you should define what you mean by "fair share".
As far as what they consume, they're based in the US, with the best technical workforce in the world. Everything about Apple is an only-in-America story. Turning around and saying "Oh, all we consume is some police protection" is pretty dishonest in view of that. Like they'd be fine if you transported the campus to Sierra Leone and hired good security? The only other countries developed enough to have conceivably yielded an Apple all levy higher taxes than us (VAT vs corporate income notwithstanding), and a higher regulatory burden. "Fair share" isn't so much to ask for, when you look at the competition in terms of countries.
Note that the people who own Apple generally do pay a similar percentage - some of it in the form of corporate income, some of it as cap gains.
As far as what they consume, they're based in the US, with the best technical workforce in the world.
I'd bet good money that Apple's workforce is received a disproportionate amount of education outside the US. For example, the US government didn't educate Jonathan Ive. Besides which, the workforce was already charged for that and Apple is paying a wage premium to compensate for it.
Since you seem to believe Apple consumes more than just police protection, please be specific about what you think they consume. Which of the major services do you believe enabled Apple to be an "only-in-America" story? Was it redistribution from the young to the old, or was it the war on Iraqis?
On your side of the argument, if you say "Hey, Apple doesn't really gain anything from the wars we're fighting or the expanded security state", I'd agree and include myself in there as well. Others might disagree. But we're all in it together on the costs for that stuff, that's what being part of the same country means.
That is so ridiculous. Maybe you need to take a deeper look at a Mac and see where much of that innovation comes from.
If you design in California, produce in China and sell in Europe, you shouldn't be allowed to shelter your profits in Caribbean tax havens instead of giving back to the societies that made you successful in the first place. We need better treaties among countries to adequately tax large capital movements across the world.
Note how the Chinese try to sidestep the problem by heavily restricting capital flow in exit. This has never been a viable policy for capital-rich countries with saturated markets, of course; but as we've been seeing since 2008, US and EU markets are not as capital-rich as we thought, after all. This doesn't mean that we should blindly follow Chinese policies, of course, but maybe a degree of restriction should be introduced.