It's a company's job to be anti-competitive, in the sense of vanquishing its competitors. It gets pathological in the case of regulatory capture, but I don't think Apple has managed that.
No it isn't, it literally isn't. A company's job is to be competitive. While there may be all sorts of libertarian apologists out there anti-competitive action is still... anti-compeititive.
Apple's walled garden of an app store among various other tactics aren't about producing a better product - they're about preventing competing products.
I beg to differ. The App store is known to have a higher quality bar for apps than the play store, and that’s helped by the $100 developer fee and strict review processes.
Not to mention Google tries hard to employ the same practices (you have to do some really roundabout stuff to install non-Play store apks).
This article on how to install the Amazon App store and third party APKs pretty much sums up the situation. On the surface it seems like a great idea to allow third party apps, but in practice it actually leads to a degraded experience, viruses, and vulnerabilities, as evidenced by the editor’s note at the top of the article recommending against doing what the article is saying.
They also pay 0.005% tax in Europe, sure it's legal, but is it morally ok? They certainly benefit from all the European infrastructure and academic research that they are not contributing back to. Some put the figure owed at 14.5 billion dollars:
I agree with you in like an end-state kind of way, but this issue was super ridiculous & used by nearly every multinational company over the course of decades. I don't understand why the EU has targeted Apple specifically other than that they're a big fish, but this was a colossal screwup by government and it went on forever. If you want to tax corporations, tax corporations. There's a million tools at your disposal to get it done. The reason it doesn't happen is because people are ill-informed, elect charlatans, allow revolving doors between biz + government, etc. People need to stop pointing the finger outward, problem is 180 degrees away.
The richest company in the world with the best lawyers will always find loopholes to exploit. I would argue it's the spirit of the law that counts. One way to tackle it is to rebut any claims of self-righteousness from said corporation.
Oh bloody hell. Another day another complaint about the morality of company X not paying tax.
I'm sick of hearing this: Tax is not a moral issue.
If the government says to corporation X "we're increasing your tax by 20%" they'll just put their prices up to cover it and in the end YOU will end up paying THEIR corporation tax.
Companies pay tax depending on certain market characteristics. Additionally, people paying taxes rebalances their consumption behaviour and can realign incentives across the marketplace.
I cannot move myself to a low tax jurisdiction very easily, but a large corporation or wealthy individual can - if we had international agreements in place, the corporation would be forced to pay a tax and would be unable to avoid it - just like me.
With regards to you thinking I am wrong, this is a matter of simple accounting: costs go up (enforced tax in this case) therefore prices MUST/WILL go up.
Customers will pay the tax bill.
Imagine a shareholders meeting: "the government have just enforced an additional 20% tax onto us which is going to cost X Billion a year. We're going to eat that cost. Is that ok?"
There's not a chance that the shareholders will accept that... prices WILL increase to cover it.
Sure, they will likely squeeze suppliers and look for savings elsewhere but that will only cover some of it as I would imagine suppliers are squeezed hard as it is.
So, yes, the government will likely get more tax in the short term but it won't be paid by the corporations.
Apple already have the largest margins in the industry. They are sitting on a 245 billion dollar cash pile. They have so much cash they literally don't know what to do with it. Meanwhile, infrastructure and public services in both our countries are failing. But I guess voters, like you, "are sick of hearing about it", which explains a lot.
I'm from the UK as it happens but I am sick of hearing about it, yes!
It's not Apple's fault that your infrastructure is failing.
So the US government spending nearly $1 Trillion annually on the military is worth every penny I assume. Imagine your military budget was halved. What could you do with an extra $500 Billion a year?
The fact that the US government spends nearly $700 Billion annually on Medicare and your health system is utterly broken doesn't bother you.
Or that your government bailed out the banks to the tune of around $16 TRILLION doesn't piss you off.
Or that your debt pile is so big your grandchildren are already in debt before they are born!
I am not American, but if I was, much of the above would also upset me. But you are invoking a straw man, my point was that Apple should pay more tax (especially to Europe), not solve all the worlds problems. I get that you don't care.
Apologies for assuming you were from the US but I hear this from Americans quite a lot about their tech giants.
I wasn't trying to create a strawman but I stand by my argument as counter to yours.
Tax isn't a moral issue. It's a financial one.
Also, it's not that I don't care but I stand by my assessment: If you increase Apple's costs, the consumers will pay it. You are basically taxing the consumers.
It depends on the company, and their market position. If you tax an interchangeable commodity with thin profit margins, the producers of that commodity will raise prices in order to stay in business.
If a company makes a high-margin product with little competition (i.e. most tech companies), they're probably already charging whatever price they think is optimal to maximize their revenue. If taxes go up, they can afford to keep prices steady. If they can raise prices, there's no particular reason why they wouldn't have already done so before these new taxes.
A lot of companies are somewhere in the middle -- if taxes go up, they might eat part of the cost, but also raise prices a little bit.
Random anecdote: I was in Harbor Freight the other day, and someone asked an employee about the impact of Trump's tariffs on their business. The employee said yeah, it's sort of a problem but their profit margin is high enough that they can just eat the cost and keep prices mostly the same. Maybe the employee is just repeating some overly-optimistic view of the situation that the leadership wants to project, but if it's true it's an interesting reminder that even businesses that appear be barely breaking even might actually be generating a very comfortable profit. (Harbor Freight is also privately owned, so they don't have to conform to shareholder expectations of financial performance.)
>They also pay 0.005% tax in Europe, sure it's legal, but is it morally ok? They certainly benefit from all the European infrastructure and academic research
Not entirely sure how they benefited European Infrastructure and Academic Research if we assume Apple made 100% of its R&D in US.
And it is morally OK fo me to not paid a single dollar of tax if I didn't make ANY profits.
A lot of people seems to have an idea where Tax should be based on Revenue and not Profits, which is basically what GST or VAT really is.
As long as profit is taxed in the country the sale is made, nobody would complain. Now it’s just transferring money and making sure to pay the taxes in the most beneficial country.
> How would you decide on any other number and justify overpayment to the shareholders?
How do they justify a 245 billion dollar cash pile to the shareholders? To decide on a number, pick one that beats all competitors, then advertise on all boxes and websites that you pay more tax than anyone else.
> Sounds like Europe has tax problems then. Pass some laws.
The worlds richest company has the best lawyers, they will always be able to find loopholes or refuse payment (see prior link). The best way to tackle it is via public rebutal of their self-righteous image.
Take Apple's non-compete scandal with other tech companies that effectively kept the salaries of engineers across the entire industry down. If you are a programmer, Apple hurt you salary prospects. [0]
Or what about collusion with other publishers for price fixing. Literally that Apple violated federal antitrust law. [1]
