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The Almighty Buck Businesses United Kingdom Apple

Apple's UK Stores Paid $7.7M in Tax Despite $1.7B in Sales (yahoo.com) 153

The UK retail arm of Apple paid just $7.7m in taxes last year despite raking in almost $1.7bn in sales, according to the company's latest accounts. From a report: Revenue at Apple Retail UK, which operates 38 of the company's stores in the UK, rose by more than 15% in the 12 months to 28 September. But after costs and expenses of around $1.7bn, the firm reported before-tax profits of just $47m, slashing its tax bill significantly. In a statement describing itself as "the largest taxpayer in the world," Apple said that it always paid the taxes that it owed.
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Apple's UK Stores Paid $7.7M in Tax Despite $1.7B in Sales

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  • by Vermonter ( 2683811 ) on Thursday July 09, 2020 @11:52AM (#60279432)

    They pay legislatures to write tax code that allows them to pretend their profits are 1% of what they actually are.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      They pay legislatures to write tax code that allows them to pretend their profits are 1% of what they actually are.

      Right. Because their profits are obviously 100% of their sales.

      It is amazing how their employees work for free, they pay no rent, and it costs nothing to manufacture the products they sell.

      • that everybody else sells for $600-$700 dollars. They're also one of the top PC sellers out there and the dominant seller of phone handsets, beating out Android's entire market share.

        As for their labor, there's a handful of well paid engineers and programmers. The rest is either machines, borderline slave labor, or actual slave labor [businessinsider.com].
        • Somebody sells Macbooks for 6-700$....really, got a link for those sparky?
        • As for their labor, there's a handful of well paid engineers and programmers.

          No there isn't. These are RETAIL STORES. They neither make nor program devices. They just sell and service them.

        • by afidel ( 530433 )

          beating out Android's entire market share.
          No, just no. They do NOT have >50% marketshare in any major market in the world. Heck even in the very, very rich UAE they only have 27%. The highest they have ever achieved that I can find is 49% in the US in Q4 2019, over the year they averaged closer to 40%. In every other market they have significantly less than they do in the US. Now if you want to talk about profits or revenue, there they probably dominate completely, but in units shipped they are the sim

        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          >beating out Android's entire market share.

          no.

          They beat the *profits* of android combined, last I heard, with much smaller share.

          And the same thing for getting paid for apps; the combined iOS sales were larger (again, last numbers I paid attention to) than android combined.

          hawk

        • and the dominant seller of phone handsets, beating out Android's entire market share.

          Not even close. Android phones outsell the iPhones 3-to-1. https://www.macworld.co.uk/fea... [macworld.co.uk]

      • Right. Because their profits are obviously 100% of their sales.

        Clearly not, but for a highly profitable company like Apple I have an extremely hard time believing that their profits are only 2.7% of their sales. We need to start taxing global companies by calculating what share of their global profits derives from the revenue in a particular country. This will prevent the shifting of profits to tax havens.

      • They pay legislatures to write tax code that allows them to pretend their profits are 1% of what they actually are.

        Right. Because their profits are obviously 100% of their sales.

        It is amazing how their employees work for free, they pay no rent, and it costs nothing to manufacture the products they sell.

        https://www.stock-analysis-on.... [stock-analysis-on.net]

        They had a net profit margin of over 21% in 2019. If that figure applies to the UK it suggests Apple is paying around 2.2% tax on their profits.

        Well that certainly seems fair. /s

        • If that figure applies to the UK it suggests Apple is paying around 2.2% tax on their profits.

          It does not apply to the UK since Apple devices are neither designed nor manufactured there.

          Operating a retail store adds very little to net profit. In fact, I am surprised their retail outlets generate any profit at all because of the service costs.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Apple retail stores are where they keep the reality distortion field generators. They serve a very profitable purpose.

    • by decep ( 137319 )

      If only that were true. They do not pay off the legislatures with their profits..... they pay them off and it is considered an operating expense and therefore not taxed.

      That is how companies game the system. Traditionally, operating expenses are subtracted from gross profits (pre-tax) which result in net profits. If Apple sets up a tax shelter in Jamaica and transfers their patents to the Jamaica company.... they can literally pay themselves licensing fees using pre-tax money as an operating expense whic

      • Then the solution is getting rid of intellectual property. Simple as that. Get rid of patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks. This problem will be solved. At the other end of the spectrum you can look at commodities like sugar and see how well the tax revenue aligns with local support.

        Tax is a cost. If one place charges less than another for the same thing, then it's almost unethical, and certainly foolish to shop at the more expensive place. So you shop your IP at low tax locations that sel

    • UK legislation and tax requirements are readily available online, can you point to the relevant bits that Apple "bought"?

      Tax requirements for all businesses operating within the UK are here: https://www.gov.uk/topic/busin... [www.gov.uk]

      The manuals that the HMRC uses to determine taxation are here: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]

      All UK legislation is here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ [legislation.gov.uk]

      Go for it.

    • You pay sales tax on sales. If they only payed 7.7m for sales tax, they have a good point. If the tax is tax on profits, then don't list the 1.7B sales number because it is not relevant. The tax on profits is only paid on the profits.

      Another way to look at it. You sell an iphone for 1000. Apple makes it and delivers to stores for 900. When sold, Apple makes a profit. But the Apple Store itself also makes a profit. How do you divide up that 100 in profit - does the store pay tax on all of that, or

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        You sell an iphone for 1000. Apple makes it and delivers to stores for 900. When sold, Apple makes a profit. But the Apple Store itself also makes a profit. How do you divide up that 100 in profit

        Well, 100 of it goes to the store to cover the store's running costs, with any remaining being the store's profit.

        Apple's profit is within the 900 they charged the store for the phone.

  • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:00PM (#60279470) Homepage Journal

    >The UK retail arm of Apple paid just $7.7m in taxes last year despite raking in almost $1.7bn in sales,

    Taxes are on profits. not sales. This is clickbait material designed to cause outrage by presenting information in a manipulative way.

    • booking the profits in countries with lower taxes to avoid paying them. Ireland is a popular destination for this trick, IIRC. There are others.

      Imagine if you could earn your money in San Francisco or NY (the nice parts, yes there's slums everywhere, in the old days we called those "servant quarters") but pay taxes like you lived in Alabama. You'd have the benefits of living in a well maintained city w/o paying the costs.

      Of course somebody has to pay those costs. That somebody is you and me.
      • Yes... but you are kind of forced into this type of behavior by the laws. (It will be interesting to see how Brexit eventually impacts this, specific to the UK.) For the EU, the whole point is for the block to be treated as a whole, and one nation is going to benefit disproportionately with an entity that is successful across the block. Likewise, it is perfectly logical that there is a base of EU operations for a foreign company (and logical that it would be in a low-tax jurisdiction within the EU).

        Beyond

    • I'm actually surprised that there was a profit, assuming that apple store pays apple the same price as other retailers fore product.

      If you go into Wally-world or such, and buy at list price, the gross margin is something silly-small like 1% or 2% (at least for the iOS stuff).

      They don't carry them to make money on the sales, but to get people into the store and buy other stuff with higher margins. I think the loss to theft *completely* wipes out the profits for iPhones and iPads.

      I've always assumed the a t

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Do you think Apple's profit margins are that low that they would end up only paying 0.45% tax on those sales?

      Apple, the richest company in the world, makes that little margin?

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        If Apple operated completely and entirely in the UK, with zero costs elsewhere, no transfer pricing and no way of mitigating their UK tax bill, but kept their current global profit margins, they'd still only pay under 3.4% tax on sales.

        So while I do think 0.45% is too low, it may legitimately be a rounding error away from the correct rate.

    • Taxes are on profits. not sales. This is clickbait material

      I agree with you were it not for the fact that the only reason Apple a company with famously high margins on goods only has low profits due to accounting tricks.

      It's isn't clickbait when the fact that profits are low is the the entire point under contention.

  • So the story here is that Apple is paying too much, compared with other corporate behemoths that pay even a lower percentage? I'd be outraged, but this is the US, after all...

    • No the clickbait story is Apple paid $47M in taxes on $1.7B in revenue but the poster failed to mention that taxes are paid based on profits and didn’t mention what Apple’s costs were.
    • I'd be outraged, but this is the US, after all...

      The first two words of the summary are the UK

      • American companies, American rules, or something like that...

        • UK based stores selling products in the UK, so UK rules. The UK does not tax Apple based upon its world wide profits, it taxes it based on its operations within the UK. In this particular story, it is only talking about a subset of Apple operations, it's retail stores.

          The story is clickbait, using misleading numbers. Read the details, realize what taxes are paid on, and what taxes are already paid (ie, 20% of that 1.7B was already collected through VAT).

          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            (ie, 20% of that 1.7B was already collected through VAT)

            No. I just made the same assumption in a calculation when replying to someone else, but went and sanity checked.

            Revenue (or Income) in financial accounts is declared excluding VAT. So you'd add 20% to the £1.4bn to get the actual figure for till receipts.

  • But after costs and expenses of around $1.7bn

    That means that the amount of tax Apple owed originally was a bit higher than 1.7 billion.

    But retail stores are expensive, staff is expensive, upkeep is expensive, rent (especially where Apple stores are) is VERY expensive.

    It is reasonable to write real expense off, so if they really had that much in expenses, then the amount of remaining tax Apple is paying is reasonable.

    So really what someone should be doing here, is looking into what the expenses ARE, to see i

  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:05PM (#60279498)
    Apple made ~1.7b had cost and expenses of ~1.7b leaving a profit of ~47m. Which it seems UK tax law says the taxes are 7.7m or ~16.3%.
    Do not be fooled by Total Revenue #'s (like the activist, press and politicians do when they want to create outrage), it is gross revenue (revenue minus all cost and expenses) that is taxed.

    Just my 2 cents ;)
    • oops
      gross revenue->net revenue my error
    • by pix ( 139973 ) on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:16PM (#60279550)
      The problem here will be the marketing or branding charges that some offshore Apple company charge Apple Retail UK for use of the Apple brand in order to transfer the majority of the profit out of the UK to avoid paying tax in the UK. I'll bet it goes to a low tax country. Makes it very difficult to compete with Apple for local companies. Just the same as companies like Starbucks. I'll bet that the real costs are far less that $1.7bn if you remove the charges from offshore Apple companies.
    • of "profit". They've been doing this for ages. They book sales & profits in low tax regions like Ireland or old Soviet Block countries where taxes are non-existent. They're allowed to do this (along with a host of other tax dodges) because of corruption.
    • Here's the problem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday July 09, 2020 @01:42PM (#60279912)

      Apple made ~1.7b had cost and expenses of ~1.7b leaving a profit of ~47m. Which it seems UK tax law says the taxes are 7.7m or ~16.3%.

      47 million profit (net income) from 1.7 billion in earnings is a profit margin of 47 / 1700 = 2.76%.

      If you look at Apple's income statement [yahoo.com], you see that their declared net income for 2019 is $55.3 billion on $260.2 billion in revenue. For a profit margin of 55.3 / 260.2 = 21.3%

      So somehow, globally 21.3% of the revenue Apple takes in becomes profit. But in UK stores only 2.76% of the revenue they take in becomes taxable profit. Either their UK stores are monumentally expensive to operate. Or somehow they're padding their UK stores' expenses to lower the stores' profit in paper, to lower their taxes. Probably some sort of licensing deal with a division in Ireland. e.g. Their Ireland-based licensing division charges the stores several hundreds of millions of pounds for using the Apple logo. That shifts much of the profit from the UK stores to Ireland, where they pay a lower corporate tax rate.

      (And I say this as someone who doesn't believe in taxing corporations - it violates the principle of no taxation without representation, and whether you individual income, sales, or corporate profit, you're taxing the same financial transactions so they have the same net effect. But until I can convince enough people of that to change tax law, companies should abide by current tax law.)

    • Apple made ~1.7b had cost and expenses of ~1.7b leaving a profit of ~47m. Which it seems UK tax law says the taxes are 7.7m or ~16.3%.

      Do not be fooled by Total Revenue #'s (like the activist, press and politicians do when they want to create outrage), it is gross revenue (revenue minus all cost and expenses) that is taxed.

      Just my 2 cents ;)

      The real shocker is that Apple decided that $7.7 million was the right amount to pay. The accountants and transfer pricing specialist could have picked any number. Somehow, they thought that $7.7 million was better than $0. Both numbers invite pubic scorn, but the $0 number is better for the bottom line. Seems like Apple is not thinking clearly.

    • Apple made ~1.7b had cost and expenses of ~1.7b

      You only don't see a problem because you think that Apple is telling the truth when they said they had costs of 1.7bn

  • What about VAT (Score:2, Informative)

    by Doub ( 784854 )
    That article conveniently ignores that they also paid $340M in VAT for that $1.7B in sales. And who knows how much more in import taxes to get the gear within the UK in the first place. Yes, Apple is evil and should be destroyed, but let's do it rationally...
  • What a dishonest! Apple's sales were "almost £1.4bn" and their "costs and expenses of around £1.35bn" so they barely made a profit. Corporate income taxes are paid on profits, so if they made a small profit, they also pay small corporate income taxes.

    Of course, Apple also pays other taxes - sales taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, etc., which the article dishonestly omits, lying by claiming that Apple's taxes paid were only the tax on their profits and not all of the other taxes paid.

    If there

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