> An Irish parliamentary committee has voted against hauling in representatives from Google and Apple to answer for their tax affairs in the country, after the firms were accused of using Ireland as a base for their aggressive tax planning.
Good, they shouldn’t. Ireland is offering Apple—and other companies—lower taxes so they will move operations there. That’s smart business for any country. It’s up to all the other countries to ask themselves why they are taxing so much.
Apple posted this PDF today showing the economic impact its current and future facilities have on Cupertino.
Philip Elmer-Dewitt:
> Spooner, a Canadian money manager and financial columnist, likened the burst of short selling to a “swarming,” a violent street crime where “an unsuspecting innocent bystander is attacked by several culprits at once.”
I hate Wall St.
Statement by Apple spokesman Steve Dowling:
> “Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012,” Dowling said in a statement. “We also help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. by keeping our R&D in California and creating category-defining products like the iPhone, iPad and the app store, which has generated billions of dollars in sales for software developers.”
If they are going to ask Apple about its offshore money, they should ask the politicians too.
Taxes.