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El Reg reports
Steve Wozniak has spoken out against Apple's tax affairs, saying all companies ought to pay 50 per cent in taxes.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live he said: "I don't like the idea that Apple might be unfair--not paying taxes the way I do as a person.
"I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50 per cent of anything I make in taxes and I believe that's part of life and you should do it."
Asked if Apple should pay that amount, he replied: "Every company in the world should."
According to Woz, money was never a factor when he started the biz with Steve Jobs 40 years ago. He added: "Steve Jobs started Apple Computers for money, that was his big thing and that was extremely important and critical and good."
Europe is currently scrutinising Ireland's tax arrangements with Apple over an alleged sweetheart deal with the company. Some have speculated the probe could lead to Apple paying $8bn in back taxes, even though the case is against the Irish government.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday April 25 2016, @07:15PM
Maybe it has been too long since he's had to subsist on cheap ramen and boxed wine.
Only one country has a 55% rate [taxfoundation.org] and the GDP-adjusted worldwide average is under 30%. We're third, worldwide, but the kicker is we tax the difference between money made and taxed elsewhere. No other country to my knowledge does this, and it is the main problem. If it sound unfair to you, just unfair how it sounds to sounds to institutional investors.
If we really wanted to fix things, we'd:
* Stop being World Police.
* Cut government spending on idiotic things.
* Simplify our tax system so less is lost to loopholes and middlemen like paper pushers.
Instead he's advocating half-government ownership, not unlike mainline China.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by SanityCheck on Monday April 25 2016, @07:24PM
Ugh I live in NJ and if you take all the taxes I pay it would approach 50%. Especially if you add up the Employer contribution to FICA, which still comes out of your pocket, not his. The amount of obfuscation around taxes is legendary.
Just because they split them up and call em other things does not mean they are not taxes. Just because they make your employer pay them, doesn't mean it's not coming out of your compensation. And worst yet a lot of these "taxes" are super regressive, like the 7% sales tax, or fees for government services (courts and motor vehicle related stuff). If people knew how much tax they are really paying and they had to write that check at end of the year in one go, there would be riots in the streets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @07:50PM
If you add income tax and sales tax together that's pretty damn close to 50%.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:26PM
Don't forget property taxes, especially considering the GP poster is in New Jersey where those taxes are obscenely high.
Throw in gas taxes too (which is most of the cost of gasoline), various employment-related taxes, and it's easily over 50%.
Now, to be fair, companies do have to pay some taxes too: when they buy stuff, they usually pay taxes on it (except for things which they're going to re-sell), so the sales tax bit really isn't fair. A corporation doesn't get to buy their computers tax-free, for instance, they pay the same sales tax we do. However, unlike us, they get to take a deduction for that tax, and we don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @07:55PM
To add insult to injury when you incur costs in order to generate income that's on you.
But when a corp incurs costs in order to generate income, that's tax deductible.
For example - if you drive to work, you are on the hook for 100% of the cost of gas and the depreciation on your vehicle. But if you drive a company car to the site of your employer's client, that gas and depreciation is tax deductible for the company.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday April 25 2016, @07:35PM
Woz wasn't referring to the corporate income tax.
I do a lot of work, I do a lot of travel and I pay over 50 per cent of anything I make in taxes
He is talking about the total tax burden, federal, state, local. In his bracket these probably do add up to 50%.
Typical workers in the European Union saw their average “real tax rate” rise again this year, from 45.06% in 2013 to 45.27% in 2014. So its not just a US federal tax rate issue, and its not local only to the US.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @11:32PM
Can't imagine how you got marked "Informative" when you left out most of the story.
In the social democracies of Europe, you pay your taxes and you get your services.
Health care is gratis or low-cost.
Education is gratis or low-cost.
Their militaries aren't sized as if they need to fend off the whole world at once.
I'm sure someone will correct me here if I'm wrong but their police departments aren't oversized in order to enforce ridiculous Jim Crow-type laws.
...meanwhile, in the USA, health care "reform" has mandated payments to insurance companies (i.e. middlemen who don't actually provide any health care).
In the USA, not only has gratis education been made extinct (thanks, Ronnie Raygun), bankruptcy law was altered so that ONE item alone was put on the cannot-discharge-this list: student debt.
USA.gov is still pissing away 54 percent of discretionary spending on militarism/imperialism--for boondoggles like the F-35.
...and hasn't even won one of its "wars" since 1945.
USA has thugs for police and Special Prosecutors haven't been instituted anywhere to deal with the rash of abusive cops.
...and even when those deviates--who use children for target practice--are actually -charged-, they get off Scot-free.
A recent example: The dark-stairwell shooter cop.
A NYC Cop is Charged for the Fatal Shooting of an Unarmed Black Man [soylentnews.org]
No Prison Time for NYPD Officer Who Killed Unarmed Man then Texted Union Rep Instead of Helping [reason.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:14AM
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes-love [vox.com]
My wife and I have been dividing our time between jobs in Sweden and Wisconsin for the past dozen years, and I'm here to tell you that taxes in Sweden are not that high. To my surprise, I found that there are lots of things to love about the Swedish tax system. Swedish taxes are easy to pay, rational, and efficient. Best of all, rather than take away opportunities, Swedish taxes expand them.
You bunch should start voting out the crap (and don't vote for Trump, he's a bigger liar than the other candidates!). If you want to vote for someone really different go vote for Jill Stein or something, not Trump. Even if the "outsiders" never win if they start getting enough votes to be scary the Two Parties will try to adopt some of the policies. That's how it works.
Don't play the stupid "game theory" stuff and always vote for "lesser evil of the two" which is the optimal if there's only one election. Go for lesser evil if the option is some guy who is likely to become a Dictator and abolish elections, or if lesser evil is the only alternative - e.g. the independents/outsiders aren't much better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:57AM
[vox.com]
a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison
So, another smart graybeard.
.
I bookmarked this the other day.
All Other Industrialized Nations Pay Less & Get More Health Care [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wemeantwell.com]
Detached images:
USAians are so clueless about how good they have it Re: taxes [forbes.com]
USA is clearly NOT among the "advanced" nations (which see after of their people's health) [theatlantic.com]
vote for Jill Stein
You mean *again*.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Monday April 25 2016, @07:40PM
Having a top tax rate of X%, and actually collecting X% are entirely different things; and then what is that x% a percentage of? The average citizen gets taxed pretty much based on how much money goes in. If he buys a car or a boat or food or clothes or gets a hair cut, that doesn't reduce his tax bill at all.
A corporation is taxed on profit, which is net of expenses... and which is subject to a LOT more manipulation. How can I my poor company OurCorp profit when it need's to license the use of it's own "OurCorp" brandname from a company in another company in ireland. We would be glad to pay 39% of all profits the US govt... but alas, OurCorp-Ireland is charging us a millions to license patents we sold them for $1 last year, and there just isn't any profit left after paying those bills. Indeed... this year we had a "loss".
OurCorp-Ireland is doing fantastically though! It has billions in the bank. We're so tight, we're now borrowing our own money back from them.
On the bright side, the interest expense on the loan (that is effectively to ourselves) is tax deductible!
And they wonder why people are cynical about corporate taxes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:50PM
which is subject to a LOT more manipulation
Possibly you're the only comment actually replying to Woz. Everyone else is sloganeering (well, mostly). Some of the sloganeering is actually pretty good.
I wouldn't even go as far as "manipulation" because corporate finance structure depends on the underlying business.
No one wants to pay taxes, naturally, so making paper profits illegal will result in paper products disappearing. This is easy to do on the spreadsheet and hard to do in real life. That can only have negative effects on economic growth because the "best" corporate financial structure is rarely having zero paper products.
So all the money will go into ... capex. OK hurray we just make our bubble economy more bubbly. We'll overbuild until it all crashes, after all taxes are a 100% loss to the corporation but digging holes and filling them in might be only a 99.999% loss to the corporation if you sell it as an exercise routine DVD or some idiocy like that. Who wins? Won't be "us".
So all the money will go into ... stock operations. Think Alibaba as a chunk of yahoo. OK hurray no one benefits from commissioned salespeople brokers. Whats the endgame after all ownership is concentrated into a handful of companies? Was that what you thought you were asking for when you asked for high taxes on paper profits?
We can bury the money in the balance sheet. Tada! No dividends, never. No profits to be taxed. The elite rich who own all the stock will now see their stock grow faster than ever. I mean, you knew high corporate tax rate would increase income inequality and you intentionally wanted that, right? It seems pretty obvious.
What happens when a natural annual business cycle does NOT line up with the annual tax cycle? OK I see your entire farm harvest is pure profit, at least on our tax calendar you have no expenses this quarter all piles of revenue, we'll take half of that in taxes and waste it all, leaving you with not enough to plant next season. Its a simple parasitical ecological simulation. At peak health a very well fed animal can possibly withstand a rare and short term tapeworm infestation. But why would the tapeworm infestation "naturally" line up with being well fed? What if it happens in the dead of winter? Well I guess the animal dies "oh well" at least the tapeworm had a nice last dinner. This also applies to cycles longer than annual, obviously. Unless the parasitical tax cycle lines up with the business cycle, the business will be killed. Do any business cycles line up with the existing tax cycle other than big screen TV sales at walmart? Is it good to centrally control all business cycles via taxation?
The fundamental problem is "we" are used to an economic system where humans are paid the same amount of pure profit 52 or 26 times, then settle up an annual record, but corporations don't and usually can't operate on that same schedule (so every 26 entries in accounts recieveable for a corporation they should balance and pay their tax records, wtf? How does that scale?).
Even if it made sense for a food store or some business anyway, it simply wouldn't work for the energy sector, or semiconductor plants, or the FIRE sector, or numerous other interesting businesses we'd like to keep around.
See the problem isn't the parasitical nature of taxation, its that the parasitical nature means avoidance, and avoidance means all kinds of useful business can't be done anymore or the costs are staggering.
In the end .gov taxes everything multiple times, may as well just VAT it on the consumption side and property tax it on the wealth side and be done with it. The income tax concept is just a dumb idea that does little but make accountants a pile of money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @07:41PM
For federal yeah.
Add in sales tax. Now add in property. Now add in the other 'not taxes' but act like taxes like FICA and SS. Now are you luck enough to live in a state with no state tax? Well most of us are not.
If you add all of that together it is between 40 and 50%.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Monday April 25 2016, @11:00PM
Out of Touch Madman
i feel like you don't know about historical tax rates. [blogspot.com]
however, you missed the biggest problem that is fueling all the smaller problems: campaign financing.
if each candidate was given $X for their election and they couldn't spend a dime more ("donations"/"free services" prohibited) then our politicians might actually start listening to the general public rather than just people who will donate a minimum of $1000 to their election campaign.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:20AM
The difference between the top marginal tax rate and the lowest [guim.co.uk]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 26 2016, @12:29AM
Train drivers in the U.K. Have way over 60% of their overtime taken in tax, and 10% of the rest goes in vat.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:18AM
Bullllllshit!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:31AM
An trained virgin train driver earns upto £52k [virgintrainscareers.co.uk]. He has 2 children, his wife earns £30k and gets £34.40 a week in child benefit (£1788.80 a year)
He decides to do some overtime - 3 days at time and a half.
Train company spends £1138 on the overtime.
£138 is employers NI contribution
That leaves £1000 wage
40% income tax leaves £600
2% NI leaves £580
£178 is taken from his payslip directly because of child benefit reduction, reducing the net pay to £402.
£402 of the original £1138 spent is 35.3%, or a tax rate of 64.7%.
Now imagine that the same toc spends that £1138 on something from a company. That £1138 goes to the company owned by a millionaire. They then pay it out in dividends, which attracts 20% tax for their owner. The owner takes £910.40 out of that £1138.
Now imagine that extra £1138 was paid as a bonus to a mid-ranking banker earning £300k. His take home pay increases by £530, or a marginal tax of 53.4%
Or that £1138 is paid to someone on £20k, net pay increases by £680, or 40% tax.
The train driver with the family in the £50k-£60k bracket pays the most marginal tax, but even someone on £20k (take home pay £1400 a month) is paying 40% tax on their overtime. If you have business expenses (commuting etc) that comes off after-tax for the workers, and pre-tax for the owners, widening the gap even more.
Making tax bands relative to wealth rather than income would be the fair way to reward economically useful work. Ideally you'd simply tax wealth, but without currency controls that wouldn't work, and currency controls are a major barrier to trade.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:29PM
That's the employer's cost, not the employee's tax.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:36PM
No, that's not how it works. It matters not if the tax is hidden or not. As an employer of someone earning £50k, if I want to give them an extra £1000 take home pay, I have to spend an extra £3000.
That is a ridiculous situation.