Apple: Corporate Tax Rates

just spitballing here, but is there a 19th century solution in all this? Tariffs. GE wants to say it's a foreign company for tax reasons? Fine, but they get to pay a surcharge on all business they do in the US. Everyone wants to lure them back with carrots when the stick could be effective too.

 

Just facts. You're suggesting corporations should have no tax responsibilities when, in fact, they have more power and access to local, state and federal governments and accrue more benefits from local, state and federal governments than any other entity, human or not.

 

You're right ... I don't think corporations should pay income taxes. I don't think wealth should be subject to double-taxation. Further, I think the fact that corporations are subject to income taxes opens up the U.S. tax code to just all sorts of shenanigans. I think corporate taxation diverts a lot of very smart, very creative minds into an activity that, in aggregate, is of no true economic value.

But I think you're also wrong in a very important way. Corporations don't accrue benefits ... the people who own them and choose to act (or continue to act) in concert do. Forcing the corporation to pay one tax and then forcing the owners to pay another is one way of settling accounts. But, in my opinion, it is a DREADFULLY inefficient and ill-advised way of doing so.

 

So should we then triple or quadruple capital gains tax rates to reflect the true value corporations stockholders receive in terms of land, water, roads, bridges, police, fire, regulatory, etc.?

 

You sure you're not Elizabeth Warren?

In all serious I am absolutely not dodging that issue, but I think that's entirely another kettle of fish. I believe that to be so, in part, because we have that damn corporate income tax, which means we have a hard time getting a handle on just who's paying and how much they should pay.

 

"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

--Ambrose Bierce

 

Now that the chickens have come home to roost, its ironic that Apple and other high tech companies have been viewed as good socially responsible corporate citizens. while companies like Walmart have been portrayed as the anti Christ.

 

Where and by whom was Apple viewed as a good socially responsible corporate citizen?

 

What helps Apple is that many of its biggest customers and artists/graphic designers/computer geeks who many times are more liberal than anything else. I have a friend who hates all things Republican yet ball washes for Apple and Steve Jobs any chances he gets.

 

Only two things are certain in life, and not even those are certain in the life of a corporation.

 

I haven't done this in years, but when I left the business, almost no one was paying corportae taxes - everyone was forming as an LLC.