Taxing Times for Apple raises questions fro all businesses

The corporate push to pay ever lower amounts in taxes and wages has reached a tipping point and the backlash could ultimately harm the businesses themselves, writes Daniel Gross.

APPLE always seemed like the perfect company. Not so fast. When CEO Tim Cook testified before the US Congress on May 25, he didn’t come to talk about Apple’s latest amazing gadget or the need to grant more visas to computer programmers. Rather, in his maiden voyage to the parliament as Steve Jobs’s successor, Cook had to defend the company’s tax-avoidance efforts. What should have been a triumph for Cook was instead an awkward encounter.

The senate sub-committee documented the ways in which Apple avoided billions of dollars in US taxes by funnelling activities through subsidiaries in Ireland, where it paid about 2% tax and where some Apple subsidiaries appeared to be the business equivalent of duty-free zones — residents of no country and, hence, immune to taxation.