WASHINGTON — Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.
The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at a public hearing on Tuesday.
Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.
— New York Times, May 21
John McCain of Arizona, who is the panel’s senior Republican, said: “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.”
— Sen. McCain,
on Apple’s tax dodging
To think of all the taxes I could have avoided paying to this scandalous government if I had followed Apple’s example and done a little creative and manipulative accounting–ok, a lot of that manipulating–and that without so much as breaking any laws.
Of course, I’m not big and powerful and don’t have the friends and even the friendly enemies in Congress that Apple has.
(Full disclosure: LIke everybody else I love Apple for the great products and the things they’ve done for the world, although the service I had from Apple when I was locked into a two-year contract with an iPhone and other services was so horrendous I couldn’t wait to switch, and did as soon as possible.)
But me, I don’t have the power or the money (I repeat myself) to hire high-dollar accountants for me personally to do “creative accounting” on my income taxes. How many of us do?
Your thought for the day is (Christian ethics and morality div.)–while conceding that Apple Inc. is already the biggest taxpayer in America, but also one that has carved out huge advantages that most businesses including the small guys can only dream of:
Why can’t the powerful just play it straight in capitalism as well as in government?
One answer perhaps–and noting that corruption is not always technically a crime at all: Power (almost always equated with money) seduces and corrupts (in a real sense) no matter who or what amasses it in gobs.
Power (i.e., money) corrupts politicians and governments and whole countries, businesses and corporations, universities (think college football fanaticism and paying “amateurs) even institutions like (you may have noticed) large churches.
Not to mention you or me. We’ll all use all the power at our disposal to protect our interests–and the more money and political power involved, the more prone we are to the sinful corruptions.
And who among us doesn’t want more and more power over our lives.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
— 1 John: 1: 8
Many have gone to Congress (former GOP Rep. Dick Armey comes to mind) and fought like dogs to simplify the tax code so that taxes can be filed on a postcard.
Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, politicians and giant corporations alike like the advantages they have in playing games with loopholes, credits and all kinds of exceptions–the politicians so that they have something to campaign on and stay in office forever, and the corporations for the advantages they can gain as they get bigger and bigger.
If so much else, if tax simplification were so easy, it would have been done decades ago.
But there’s political politics and there’s corporate politics too.
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On a more pastoral note . . . .
Consider a gift to UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, where one of the most highly rated charities in the country seeing as how every penny goes directly to relief, not to overhead or administrative costs. . . .
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