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Comment by 2buckchuck | Hacker News Reader

its despicable that companies like Apple reap enormous rewards and take advantage of American infrastructure and consumers, but don't have the decency to pay their fair share of taxes. I'm not a lover of taxes or the American government, but I think that successful corporations (and people) need to give back to the countries in which they operate.

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For 2011, Apple paid $8.28 billion in income taxes, on $34.2 billion income, for an effective rate of 24.2%.

Similar for the other companies mentioned in the article. For instance, I believe Google paid around 20%.

Are those taxes that Apple paid because they were taxes on Apple as a corporate entity, or taxes paid by Apple onbehalf of its' employees who were being taxed on their income?

I don't believe that there is an accusation that the workers at Apple are avoiding tax, but that the company is avoiding tax.

It's corporate income taxes. Apple does not pay taxes on behalf of its employees.

Ah, my ignorance of US financials comes through then... so there is no US equivalent of the PAYE system or a withholding tax to ensure non-avoidance by employees?

When tzs refers to income tax, that traditionally means personal/employee income in the UK whereas corporation tax is the tax on profits levied to corporations.

Hence, tzs's statement above reads as if Apple did pay income tax on behalf of their employees, but makes no mention of corporation tax or an equivalent.

Too many similar terms used differently from one place to another. Now I understand the downvote.

Tax witholding for salaried employees is entirely normal and customary in the US, but the article is not about those individual taxes, and US taxpayers wouldn't ever describe the taxes as being paid "by" the employer on employees' behalf.

Careful. Employers shoulder half the burden of payroll taxes, which take the largest bite out of most employee paychecks.

My data came from here: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/Income_Stat...

A lot of times when people want to sway the conversation, they include the taxes that employees of Apple pay as well.

Large companies even do it at the state level too. see[1] for an example of using an office in reno to avoid some (I don't think you can avoid some taxes like payroll, etc) taxes in California.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strate...

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