Apple Ping!
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Posted on 02/17/2011 11:01:12 AM PST by Swordmaker
Cisco CEO John Chambers wants to bring cash home without the tax hit.
FORTUNE -- Economists, businessmen, and politicians of every stripe have spent months talking themselves hoarse about how to get the roughly $2 trillion in corporate reserves back into the economy. Get ready to start hearing a lot about that sum's international cousin.
A group of tech, pharmaceutical and energy giants is readying a major lobbying blitz for a tax holiday that would allow them to bring home the estimated $1 trillion they've got parked overseas at a steeply discounted rate, Fortune has learned.
The campaign is still in its planning stages, but sources close to the effort say Oracle, Cisco, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Duke Energy (DUK, Fortune 500), and Pfizer (PFE, Fortune 500) are among the major players looking to bankroll a coordinated, sustained pitch to sell policymakers on the idea. Their aim is to win a one-year tax amnesty on their foreign earnings, allowing them to repatriate that money at a tax rate of about 5%, instead of the 35% they face now.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
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So Libs. Let’s refresh. Are they doing this because tax rates are too low or too high?
discuss.
Taxes are for the Commoners, not the Elite.
You, sir, need to learn your place. < /obligatory sarcasm tag>
Looks like a scam to be. They should pay no less than 20% tax on foreign earnings they want to bring home here to distribute to shareholders. Because that is what is usually done with this moohlah brought home. I am not a libertarian...I have zero problem taxing these corporate clowns who are all free traitors anyways. They built offshore. They employed offshore. They earned offshore. Now they want to bring this boodle back home for free (5%)
My own thought is that they should get a credit for the taxes they paid in whatever country they earned the money. Of course, that would incline them to repatriate money from other high-tax countries, but you can’t control everything.
“So Libs. Let’s refresh. Are they doing this because tax rates are too low or too high?”
Nothign to with libs, it has to do with the lies that they pay pay 35%. They open factories in China, launder the money though Ireland and want a tax amnesty? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html
Apple has subsidiaries who’ve made money in foreign countries and been taxed in those foreign countries. America is one of the few countries to tax earnings made in foreign countries, so any money brought home and used to pay investors or conduct R&D is taxed again. While Apple does get a “credit” on the foreign taxes paid, America also has the second highest (soon to be highest) corporate tax rate of any industrialized country in the world.
I have nothing against that idea. But if all or most of these foreign earnings were taxed then how come these major corporations are offering to even pay 5% tax to get the money into the USA
My suspicion is that most of these foreign earnings has been gamed so that little taxes have been paid on them abroad. Singapore might have very low corporate taxes so Apple and Cisco do their Asian business out of Singapore where the tax is 2%. (I am guessing here)
What’s the effective rate paid by US companies?
So what is a typical level of taxation that Apple pays in Europe or Asia? Apple sells in Japan India and China...So what taxes are extracted in those nations? Plus don’t many US corporations when earning abroad incorporate in tax havens?
ask yourself why these “loopholes” are being used in the first place... again. it’s not cause taxes are too low here that they seek to go elsewhere to lower them further.
And they'll keep it offshore in the face of losing one third of it if they want to repatriate it.
Such a request will have the administration over a barrel. If they say yes, that brings $1 trillion into the economy from overseas, a VERY GOOD THING, and an instant windfall of $50 billion in taxes for the treasury, which pays for a lot of the stuff they want (you know it won't go to reduce the debt). But it violates their principle of corporate hatred and high taxes. If they say no, they get to screw companies and keep taxes high, but they lose that $50 billion in easy tax revenue.
Let it stay offshore. Doesn’t bother me. This country has huge problems and giving these guys a free ride is idiotic. If you read the rest of this article it says most “repatriated” money goes to shareholders, does not get invested to create more jobs. Shareholders get larger dividend distributions.
So all the Apple big shots and Duke Power etc are acting in self interests. They own millions of shares and want to enhance them. It will help America very marginally. Screw these cheap bast***s
Most repatriated money gets ploughed into dividends...little enhancement to the greater USA. So 20% tax on repatriated earnings looks fair to me. 5% is an insult and a scam.
-—”ask yourself why these “loopholes” are being used in the first place... again. it’s not cause taxes are too low here that they seek to go elsewhere to lower them further.”
if the tax rate was 2% and they could find a way to pay 1% they would do it (and have a duty to do so.) But taxes are high, I agree. Yet, still people want services, we need a military, social security pays people each month etc etc. Someone has to pay, and if one side doesn’t others have t make up for it.
-—”Don’t care, as long as whatever they’re doing is legal. Corporations have no duty to maximize their tax bill any more than you do.”
I agree with you, that’s why many are calling to close these loopholes, since they are unfair to taxpayers and especially yo US based corporations.
IMO, they should pay a flat 10%-15% tax depending on how many long term jobs are created. One hand washes the others...
http://thecentralcrux.blogspot.com/2010/09/papa-boehner-assumes-position-sorry-i.html
I'm not getting into me personal situation here. Take that as you will. The corporate taxes and repatriation taxes are what they are. They are fair. Corporations used to pay a lot more in 1950s1960s 1970s. They paid a higher proportion of all taxes sent to DC
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