Here’s what Apple CEO Tim Cook had to say about it in a long interview published this weekend in the Washington Post:
We’ve said at 40 percent, we’re not going to bring it back until there’s a fair rate. There’s no debate about it. Is that legal to do or not legal to do? It is legal to do. It is the current tax law. It’s not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic. It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.
Cook simultaneously wants us to know he is not a bad “traditional CEO” who just cares about money. No, to the contrary, he feels an “incredible responsibility” to “the communities and the countries that the company operates in” and “the whole ecosystem of the company.”
Therefore, because Cook cares so little about money and so much about communities, Apple won’t be paying its taxes. That’s just fair.
Jon Schwarz
Apple: corporate greed and hypocrisy at its finest. Developers and media companies selling through the App Store are required to pay a 30% cut to Apple; but paying taxes to the government just like everybody else? That’s just unfair.
Apparently, a ‘fair’ tax rate for Apple would be 2%; that’s how much the company has paid for years on its European operations run from Ireland. Hopefully that deal will soon come to an end.
The commission issued preliminary findings against Ireland in 2014 before initiating an in-depth investigation into tax rulings Apple received from the Dublin authorities in 1991 and 2007. The company has faced criticism in the US Senate for paying a 2 per cent corporate tax rate in Ireland, far lower than the country’s headline 12.5 per cent rate.
Arthur Beesley
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