How the 1% sidesteps billions in taxes

And you wonder how the prices of stuff like gasoline can be so expensive at the pumps when companies manipulate "benefits" and tax breaks like this?

... with a handful of employees in a small office... has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states... putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits... (they) sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.

As it has in Nevada... (they have) ... created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

... companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed them to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes, according to former executives. ... pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations...

Wal-Mart last year paid worldwide cash taxes of $5.9 billion on its booked profits of $24.4 billion, a tax rate of 24 percent, which is about average... accountants have found legal ways to allocate about 70 percent of its profits overseas, where tax rates are often much lower, according to corporate filings... tax experts say that strategies like the Double Irish help explain how ... (they manage) to keep its international taxes to 3.2 percent of foreign profits last year, to 2.2 percent in 2010, and in the single digits for the last half-decade, according to the company’s corporate filings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/busin ... V6Or4iMwOA

Fair share? Is this why the 99% bears the tax burden in this country while the fat cats get richer?

You never hear about tax high States lowering their corporate rate to attract business. Companies and shareholders are just expected to just give it up so government can overspend on Toyota Prius's in Miami that are never used.

GOP twin needs his govt to find more ways to take away peoples' money by force so that they can hire storm troopers to protect his legally protected ideas.

I wish the folks that invented ways to light fires way back when patented or copyrighted their ideas, then people that want to protect ideas today to keep others from using them could sit in their cold hovels and write away about their protectorate.

Conservative? Liberal? Same team, it is the team that hates the individual. I would bet that GOPtwin and LJ are the same person.

Don't forget to blindly worship the %, oh wait you wont forget, it is part of your religion of "take" and since you want, you wont forget.

When the government tries to compel one to pay more than a "fair share", the result is that legal means to avoid paying in excess of one's "fair share" are sought. Who is more deserving of the fruits of WalMart's efforts? The stockholders, employees and customers of WalMart or the governments of the various nations and States in which WalMart has stores? Higher taxes on WalMart, or Shell Oil for that matter, raise the price that must be charged for the products they sell in order to pay those higher taxes. That will either result in higher prices being charged for the goods, which is a detriment to the consumers; or a lower dividend being paid to the stockholders, which is a detriment to those that hold the stock including many union pension plans and individuals who include that stock in their IRAs and 401Ks. WalMart and Shell Oil do not exist for the benefit of the government - they exist for the benefit of their customers and those who have an invested interest in seeing the company succeed.

I, as an individual, do not exist for the benefit of the government either. That is not my main purpose in life. Government is instituted by the citizens to protect them from having their liberty taken from them by force and fraud - not to take their liberty from them via force and fraud.

Evidently no one read the article I linked to. I was trying to make a point, the 5 page article is about how APPLE uses every tax trick in the book to avoid paying US taxes. APPLE, you know, that green, liberal, hippy-dippy, tree-hugging corporate jewell of the LEFT. I edited out the references to APPLE in my quotes to highlight how ALL COMPANIES take fair advantage of our tax breaks which have been given to them by all sides of the aisles. At least the liberals on 285 Bound were smart enough not to make a comment on this topic and make themselves look stupid.

Point made anyway.

Oh, I read the link Twin - I was simply attempting to further chum the waters by using bait, WalMart and evil big oil, that "progressives" usually rise to.

PrintSmith wrote: Oh, I read the link Twin - I was simply attempting to further chum the waters by using bait, WalMart and evil big oil, that "progressives" usually rise to.

Apology offered. And I bet the Occupy Wall Street idiots who plan to join in solidarity with all the communists and socialists tomorrow on May Day world wide are not going to be protesting outside of Apple's headquarters.

The left... hypocrites... the bunch of them.

I liked the part on the last page of that article where a whiny liberal city council member tries to get Steve Jobs to give their city free Wi-Fi. Jobs gives her a nice capitalistic pig response. lol

In one of his last public appearances before his death, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, addressed Cupertino’s City Council last June, seeking approval to build a new headquarters.

Most of the Council was effusive in its praise of the proposal. But one councilwoman, Kris Wang, had questions.

How will residents benefit? she asked. Perhaps Apple could provide free wireless Internet to Cupertino, she suggested, something Google had done in neighboring Mountain View.

“See, I’m a simpleton; I’ve always had this view that we pay taxes, and the city should do those things,” Mr. Jobs replied, according to a video of the meeting. “That’s why we pay taxes. Now, if we can get out of paying taxes, I’ll be glad to put up Wi-Fi.”

He suggested that, if the City Council were unhappy, perhaps Apple could move. The company is Cupertino’s largest taxpayer, with more than $8 million in property taxes assessed by local officials last year.

Ms. Wang dropped her suggestion.

Businesses aren't created for shareholders, silly boy. They are here to be leached off. For example liquor sales, goverment makes much more off booze than the actual distiller.

In the old model of socialism, goverment would nationalize the companies, now goverment prefers to behave like a vampire, not only drain off the lifeblood, but also force exerts control over them, you will do this, hire these people, follow these regulations, etc.

While the New York Times article did go after Apple pretty well, they still never used the term "subsidies" when referring to Apple's tax deductions and tax breaks. I suspect they would of had the article been about Exxon, even though both Apple and Exxon use similar techniques, though Apple is even better at it.

While Apple only paid 9.8% in taxes, the article did mention the evil Wal-Mart who paid 24%. And according to this article, the even more evil Exxon averaged 29% over the last 6 years.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/04/news/companies/exxon_oil_taxes/index.htm

So we have an oil company who pays 29% and Apple Computer who pays 9.8%, and guess who the Democrats go after for more taxes? It's not their friend Apple Computer who happens to make the highest profits of any retailer in the world and also have the world's highest company valuation. No, they go after Big Oil and leave Apple alone. Talk about politics!

This is an example of targeted taxes where the government picks the winners and losers. Why not just lower the rates, get rid of the deductions, credits, and tax breaks and treat all companies the same?