Apple Avoids Paying Taxes for Benefits It Reaps

Regardless of your views on taxes, it's hard to support a company operating fully in one state - California - and benefiting from its infrastructure, culture, workforce, quality of life, etc., while setting up an "office" in another state - Nevada which has no state income tax - so the company avoids paying for the very services it uses to great profit.  And, that's exactly the case of Apple, as exposed in this story from the New York Times.

This oligarchic manipulation of the system has been exposed numerous times over the years, especially when American corporations operate fully in the United States - benefiting from infrastructure, legal foundations, stability, workforce, etc., - but setting up the corporate "headquarters" in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes.  The corruption was documented in great detail in the book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston, though despite that books publication in 2003, nothing has changed.  It is absolute fraud, and it's a shameless lack of integrity.  In fact, just like the expose on Dateline tonight about teenagers, it's a culture of cheating, clear and simple.  Sadly, we have reached a sad point in our republic when people will willingly break the rules - or bend the ethics - all in the name of making money.  Sure, they can do it.  And, of course it's just good business to maximize profit while minimizing expenses.  But how we can justify this as logical, ethical, righteous, or simply not a big deal, is beyond me.  And that's what's happened to the American character.

I have to thank Darren at RightOnTheLeftCoast for linking to this story, though we disagree on this issue.

Apple MacBook Air 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 Notebook Computer - MC966LL/A