Apple’s seeming tax avoidance could spell higher taxes for all.
Treasurers at companies whose bosses routinely comment about the unfairness of the US tax regime on multinationals and how it forces them to avoid repatriating cash are likely rolling their eyes today.
That’s because any hope of a Homeland Investment Act 2.0 redux just got quashed by revelations that Apple, the once-darling of the stock market, had a sweetheart deal with Ireland that allowed it to avoid most taxes on $44 billion of overseas income. Apple had previously been part of a coalition of corporations, including Cisco and Microsoft, and Google to push for another round of repatriation.That coalition, and its lobbying arm The WIN America Campaign, closed shop about a year ago as the trend seemed to be moving more toward a permanent solution to corporate taxes than a temporary HIA-like measure.
But how the latest revelations will play into a long-term solution are uncertain. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a report released yesterday that the secretive maker of computing gadgets had cut a deal with Ireland to pay only 2 percent tax, rather than the normal 12 percent required by Irish corporate law.
Tim Cook’s testimony before the subcommittee notwithstanding, the anti-corporate Congressional natives are getting restless. And whether or not Mr. Cook was appearing before the committee in some sort of Glasnostic attempt to show America how complicated the tax system is and to what lengths corporations will go to avoid paying taxes, it likely spells more scrutiny and more public shaming for corporates. Corporates will get hoisted by Cook’s petard.
Despite the Obama administration’s consistent support of corporate tax policy, however tacitly hidden behind tax fairness rhetoric, corporate treasurers will now need to gird their loins and prepare to pay appropriate tax on their overseas earning.
The Apple example, or the iDodge, has made the current wink and nod approach politically unfeasible.