Taxes and following the laws

There has been a lot of "discussion" about the recent Apple Tax kerfuffle and the various articles written about their practices.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html
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.

At the end of the day as far as i can see Apple are simply following the rules of the land, if you want to blame someone blame politicians for allowing the rules to be structured that way.

The USA tax code is almost twice the size at 17,000 pages of any other country in the world.

Its full of bribery and corruption wher lobbyists are securing sweetheart deals and riders from politicians who in turn are raising campaign funds etc from donors. At least in Russia and Indonesia etc when you brive someone you are able to see the white of their eyes and get a better return on investment for your bribe....

Apple's pretty weak ass response is below, especially mentioning the charity stuff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-response-on-its-tax-practices.html?_r=2

They should simply say hey we are following the laws of the USA and countries we operate in, if you want to change the law then we’ll comply other than that we hire a truckload of people and pay a truckload of taxes and are creating a truckload of return on equity for our investors.

Best response ever regarding taxes was from a legend by the name of Kerry Packer (don’t worry most of you wont know who it is) but in front of a parliamentary enquiry he said

"I am not evading tax in any way, shape or form. Now of course I am minimizing my tax and if anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax they want their heads read because as a government I can tell you you're not spending it that well enough that we should be donating extra"

Lol if you want to learn more about him a perfect example of Kerry Packer – “If we’ve got all these photos done maybe we can get down to being serious about it rather than it just being a circus” -



We miss you Mr Packer :(