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Headline: "Apple Avoided Billions in Taxes" Fact: "Investigators have not accused Apple of breaking any laws, and the company is hardly the only American multi

Headline: "Apple Avoided Billions in Taxes" Fact: "Investigators have not accused Apple of breaking any laws, and the company is hardly the only American multinational to face scrutiny for using complex corporate structures and tax havens to sidestep taxes." NY Times going for another Pulitzer.

usaar333 13y ago
Tax avoidance is legal by definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance I don't see the headline as inaccurate at all; if anything, I figured that it is common knowledge that Apple intentionally avoids billions in taxes.
joelrunyon 13y ago
Breaking News: 300 million americans avoided paying the maximum amount of tax possible through legal deductions because they also like to keep as much of their money as possible. /shocker
- hahainternet 13y ago
  > Breaking News: 300 million americans avoided paying the maximum amount of tax possible through legal deductions because they also like to keep as much of their money as possible. Breaking News: America lacking social care facilities of other first world nations. Personal greed and lack of social conscience confirmed factors. No self awareness in sight.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    News update: Messenger now being shot, denial of shocking levels of poverty extant. Wishful thinking at all time high.
    - bruceboughton 13y ago
      As a fellow Brit and huge fan of the NHS, I don't think you are not doing your cause any good in this set of threads. Apple minimising the tax they pay has nothing to do with funding of social causes. The Tories' desire to privatise the NHS has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple's tax bill. Please stop hijacking this discussion.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    You're assuming that paying more taxes = increased social facilities. In theory, that works great, but given the track record of various government programs, I'd suggest that it's not a 1:1 ratio. I'd argue, the matter is a lack of trust in the government to allocate money wisely rather than a prevalence of greed among people who'd rather watch the world burn than pay another cent to the government.
    - hahainternet 13y ago
      > I'd argue, the matter is a lack of trust in the government to allocate money wisely rather than a prevalence of greed among people who'd rather watch the world burn than pay another cent to the government. Who would you trust more? A group of people formed explicitly to help others, with no profit motive and less fear of job loss or a group formed to make profit, organised around a profit motive? Yeah it's not perfect and there's all sorts of fraud and corruption that goes on, but I'll take the NHS any day over the US health system, and so would almost everyone here.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    We generally don't have the social care facilities of other first world nations as a matter of choice. A capitalist environment and small federal republic aren't the best equipped to provide them, and our adversarial government system is particularly ill-suited to being efficient at providing such services. Lack of taxes isn't the problem, but Crony Capitalism, powerful lobbying, and government protectionism are almost certainly the more likely culprits. The health care system is already broken in this nation because Congress broke it through wage regulation in the 40s. That same government has now professed that they want to fix it by adding more of what broke it in the first place. I think that the Affordable Care Act has some good parts to it, and hopefully it will at least work at an economy of scale to mitigate the additional layer of pay abstraction that broke it in the first place, but by no means do I think that it will fix the more recent problems it has created.

usaar333 13y ago

Tax avoidance is legal by definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_avoidance I don't see the headline as inaccurate at all; if anything, I figured that it is common knowledge that Apple intentionally avoids billions in taxes.

joelrunyon 13y ago

Breaking News: 300 million americans avoided paying the maximum amount of tax possible through legal deductions because they also like to keep as much of their money as possible. /shocker

hahainternet 13y ago
> Breaking News: 300 million americans avoided paying the maximum amount of tax possible through legal deductions because they also like to keep as much of their money as possible. Breaking News: America lacking social care facilities of other first world nations. Personal greed and lack of social conscience confirmed factors. No self awareness in sight.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  News update: Messenger now being shot, denial of shocking levels of poverty extant. Wishful thinking at all time high.
  - bruceboughton 13y ago
    As a fellow Brit and huge fan of the NHS, I don't think you are not doing your cause any good in this set of threads. Apple minimising the tax they pay has nothing to do with funding of social causes. The Tories' desire to privatise the NHS has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple's tax bill. Please stop hijacking this discussion.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  You're assuming that paying more taxes = increased social facilities. In theory, that works great, but given the track record of various government programs, I'd suggest that it's not a 1:1 ratio. I'd argue, the matter is a lack of trust in the government to allocate money wisely rather than a prevalence of greed among people who'd rather watch the world burn than pay another cent to the government.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    > I'd argue, the matter is a lack of trust in the government to allocate money wisely rather than a prevalence of greed among people who'd rather watch the world burn than pay another cent to the government. Who would you trust more? A group of people formed explicitly to help others, with no profit motive and less fear of job loss or a group formed to make profit, organised around a profit motive? Yeah it's not perfect and there's all sorts of fraud and corruption that goes on, but I'll take the NHS any day over the US health system, and so would almost everyone here.
- bmelton 13y ago
  We generally don't have the social care facilities of other first world nations as a matter of choice. A capitalist environment and small federal republic aren't the best equipped to provide them, and our adversarial government system is particularly ill-suited to being efficient at providing such services. Lack of taxes isn't the problem, but Crony Capitalism, powerful lobbying, and government protectionism are almost certainly the more likely culprits. The health care system is already broken in this nation because Congress broke it through wage regulation in the 40s. That same government has now professed that they want to fix it by adding more of what broke it in the first place. I think that the Affordable Care Act has some good parts to it, and hopefully it will at least work at an economy of scale to mitigate the additional layer of pay abstraction that broke it in the first place, but by no means do I think that it will fix the more recent problems it has created.