And what if Apple did pay their fair share of taxes? Our leaders would blow it all on war profiteers and tax cuts for the other oligarchs that pull their puppet strings. It makes no sense to continue financially supporting our kleptocracy.

These days you can get a $49 tablet, $79 smartphone and a $169 netbook.

This to me is the real sea change....pocket calculator pricing for PCs.

The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills.

This is true. Today's American educational system is all about liberal arts and college prep. There's little if any formal system for preparing and connecting students with the various trades. We seem to believe the academically disinclined are better off with a useless degree from 4th tier college than a marketable skill.

Fuck Apple and every other major corporation that pulls this shit, which unfortunately is more then we should stand for. If a corporation wants to dodge it's tax burden by setting up a shell of itself in a foreign country than it should not reap additional kick back and tax benefits in the US. The mark up on computer electronics is ridiculous, even if Apple switched their business model and assembled product they still would be racking it in because Apple fan boys are a bunch of sheep willing to shell out $300+ every other year for phone that is no different then the one they have in their pockets.

@1, that's why none of us should pay taxes.

And, what am I supposed to browse reddit on at Victrolla if not a Mac Book? Don't talk crazy.

Don’t you think it’s kind of racist to be so incredulous of the idea that Chinese workers may be more skilled manufacturers than Germans? Or Americans?

Mudede how ignorant of you to think the "America" invented the iPhone and therefore should benefit from all of the associated incomes. In fact, the designer of the iPhone is "Sir" John Paul Ive, a Brit (from Cihnford, London), who was the beneficiary of an overseas educational system. Its technical guts, glass, form factor etc. were created by Germans, Dutch, Indians and Chinese citizens who all came from different parts of the world. The idea that "Apple" is an "American" company is preposterous. It is a global company in a global market. Your quaint views of isolated nation-states with governments harvesting wealth to dispense good to citizens is as antiquated as it is naive, at very best: Naive.

Apple employs 5,000 people in Ireland, which will grow to 6,000 by 2017. Most of those are technical positions in their services divisions. Apple has 12,000 employees in Cupertino campus, on a basis of 7 million people in the Bay Area. Ireland is approaching 6,000 on a population of 4.5 million. So Apple's presence in Ireland is approaching that of Apple's presence in the Bay. You act like they're using it like a fucking mail box.

Apples innovation, technical capabilities, contributors and resources come from all corners of the planet. Like any company, it has an obligation to adhere to the law and – from there – make the best use of resources.

For 50 years lefty's laughed away that 'John Gault' is some sort of fictional impossibility. And then in happens under your own noses.

Increasingly smart, productive people have begun to affiliate their abilities, interests and economics - away from the clutches of the statists. Remember that the English designer, the German engineer, and the Chinese developer were all people who fled socialized economies and bureaucratic systems where opportunity was repressed. Now they've discovered the ability to keep on moving, to find the place where they choose to live and work. It's called having liberty.

How Orwellian that your prescription would be for some supra-national consortium of governments to prevent this, by restricting the liberty of people to move, assemble, and produce without your ability to take and dispense at your choosing.

You should less scared of Apple, and more scared of you.

It makes no sense to be mad at a company playing by the rules. And I believe Apple that they're playing by the rules. And that the rules make no sense.

Your patent idea is an ok one. I think that would work. Or we could switch to a value added tax system like many/most countries.

As for school funding, most of that comes from the local level until college. At the college level it comes mostly from states. We'd need a whole different system for funding education if the federal government collected tax for it (not that I'm opposed to this, but good luck getting our federal government to hand over that 40% to the schools).

Finally, regarding Chinese labor - this is basic economics. Specialization helps everyone. Look up comparative advantage. The US is great at producing intellectual property, and China is great at building gadgets. If we cut our production of IP and instead build gadgets, the world will produce less of both. Find what you're good at, and do as much of it as you can. Don't worry about other people getting jobs - you can buy what they produce.

So what is the U.S. corporate tax rate anyway Charles? If it's too high, would not a lower rate keep that revenue in the U.S.? To some extent, at least? This is a fundamental piece of the discussion that you blatantly overlook. I'm not so much adding my opinion on the matter as much as why don't you do a little digging on the tax rate itself. Surely you can extrapolate on that as you want. If you discuss all parts of the equation, it only bolsters your arguments.

Actually, more of an Iphone is "manufactured" in the USA than in China.
Many parts come from the USA, while China primarily does assembly, worth maybe 4 bucks per phone.
Many parts of the iphone also come from other asian countries- Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, as well as Holland and France.

The real problem is how our tax code is written.

There are plenty of countries that tax global income- we choose not to.
We could change our tax code to force Apple to pay taxes on overseas income.
Republicans in Congress, however, will not.

Seriously, there's a ton of racism and cultural imperialism wrapped up in the assumption that China can't possibly be as good as the US at manufacturing electronics. Charles doesn't even give an argument, he just offers it up as an given that America simply must be better than a less-industrialized country without offering any cogent evidence.

China has the biggest and best manufacturing sector in the world. Why is it "nonsense" that they can crank out iPhones by the millions at a higher quality than the US, which has been transitioning away from manufacturing for decades? I know it's crazy that a bunch of foreigners might be better than the US at something, but that's the economic reality.

@11 source?

No need to single out Apple. Just make tax evasion an international crime--problem solved.

Here are a few more: http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/29/10-comp…

And a lot more: http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/20…

@12 Charles didn't say that. He said he doesn't believe the US isn't *good enough*.

But of course you're ignoring the topic of the article, tax avoidance.

Mudeed,

Since you're calling for a boycott of Apple over its use of the tax code for monetary advantage, can I assume you will also be calling for a boycott of Hillary Clinton, who has transferred her homes and significant assets into a blind trust, to avoid paying the estate taxes she insists on everyone else paying?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2…

You're going to call for a boycott of Hillary, right?

Or do you let her skate because she's preordained by centrism's True Believers?

The US stopped vocational training because manufacturing jobs left, not vice-versa.

If we ever get a Congress again that will put the nation's interests above its own, here's what it should decree:

You may move your workforce overseas where labor cheaper. Additionally, you may move corporate offices abroad to so-called tax havens and corporate income off-shore to tax shelters, but if you do, you will not be able to sell your products in the U.S.

That shit would stop yesterday.

Apple is playing by the rules and you don't like the rules.

Seems like Apple is the wrong target of your criticism.

look up: laffer curve.

ia an iPhone even an "American" product. Many products that are recognized as being part of a countries identity like Jaguar are not made in the UK. But no one bitches about it. But a damn iPhone now has to be an American product for some reason. A Blackberry is a Canadian idea but we Canadians don't bitch and whine about them being made in Mexico.
Irland set there tax system up years ago and I remember articles being written about it 20 fucking years ago. They set it up to attract tech companies.

"Intel have been in Ireland for more than 20 years, several other giants arrived in the Republic when the financial crash occurred in 2008"

quote from this article
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ma…

Basically the Maude article is just more Maude whining.
The Irish were smart to change, the US wasn't. DONE!

Sorry, old news
Nothing to see here people

Closer to home, doesn't Microsoft do this as well in Ireland and Puerto Rico?

Instead of a "trade agreement" negotiated in secret and full of pro-corporate bullshit, all countries should agree to a common tax rate (I suggest 50% on corporate profits) so that these "digital age" fuckwads won't have anywhere to run.

PAY IT BACK.

@ 16 I'm not sure what your point it is. It was clearly phrased as a comparison between the US and China. My point stands—the assumption that a second-world country (China, as explicitly stated in the article) is less able to do things like manufacture electronics than other countries (the US, as explicitly stated in the article) when presented as a given and asserted without any evidence, is couched in cultural imperialism.

I'm not even sure why I'm debating this part, but the topic is clearly not tax avoidance, the topic is "Why Americans should stop buying Apple products." One supporting argument presented involved tax avoidance. The other involved Apple's refusal to move jobs to the US (if you missed that part, I'd try re-reading the article, about half of it is about that subject). I agree with the former, and happen to think that the reasons Charles gave for supporting the latter are spurious.

If you're not going to contribute to a discussion about an article you apparently didn't read, I'm not sure why you're commenting.

Why are we giving M$ a pass for their decades of tax evasion?

Most parts for an iPhone come from Asia. Samsung makes the screens (because LG can't keep up with demand) and used to make the SoCs, but now those are sent off to TSMC in Taiwan. The bodies themselves are still stamped out at Foxconn City. Most of the parts are made in Asia, then shipped to a central location for microsoldering (usually Korea or Taiwan again). Final assembly is done at Foxconn.

"Similar structures cover Microsoft’s operations across the globe. From 2001 to 2006, Microsoft... shifted the rights to software code and other assets developed largely in the U.S., to subsidiaries in Bermuda, Ireland, Singapore and Puerto Rico. Those deals reduced Microsoft’s cumulative tax bill in future years by tens of billions of dollars, according to court documents and an analysis of the company’s filings. Microsoft has $108 billion in income held offshore."

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/mic…

@3 seandr,
Agree. America is preparing HS students largely for college not for vocations/trades. I believe not all HS students want to attend college. I think it not constructive to tell a young man or lady that they have the stuff for university when in fact they don't. This country needs more vocational training at the HS level.

FUH You, CM. I like my Apple shit! And I don't give a fuck about the tax "issues" you raise. Shit like that has been going on since the Tax Code was written way back when.

This is nothing more than your weekly "outrage" as you couldn't come up with anything else.

Hey, did The Stranger enjoy the same 40% B&O tax break on being a newspaper that The Seattle Times lobbied for, or did you guys not take that tax exemption once it was in the lawbooks ?

And the Satirical Newspaper Union certainly made sure all your workers are paid $15/hr or more, not taking any of those small business reduced minimum wages that the law allows for.

@23, right..... get every country to agree to a 50% corporate profit tax.

You know that "everyone" will agree, then Russia will backpedal to a 35% tax rate, and then suddenly all of the patents on iCrap get transferred to a russian office and every country Apple sells goods in mysteriously pay 99.9% of their profits in that country as a licensing fee to Russia. That's how that game theory plays out.

We used to have very high corporate taxes here; the tax haven for large companies was R and D. Universities got fully funded departments to groom the next crop of students; the US was the worlds powerhouse of technology and envy of the world. Now we fether the masive and many nests of the 1% because we are all too short sighted to do anything else.

If you work overseas for a corporation, you are subject to double taxation on your wages. Since corporations are people, just subject them to double taxation here too. That way, Apple can pay its 12% in Ireland and 35% in the U.S. and everybody wins.