Apple uses tax tricks to avoid paying America $2.4 billion
That's $2.4 billion that could have paid for a lot of schools, a lot of body armor, a lot of debt paydown (pick one depending on your political affiliation).
How Apple Dodged $2.4 Billion In American Taxes Last Year
Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains.
California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero. [...]
Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. [...]
Without such tactics, Apple’s federal tax bill in the United States most likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year, according to a recent study by a former Treasury Department economist, Martin A. Sullivan.
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Apple’s American tax rate was 9.8 percent in 2011, according to Sullivan. Its global tax rate, however, was just 3.2 percent and has been in the single digits for the last decade. Its profits are skyrocketing.
