Tim Cook confirms: tech met with Trump to ask for billions in tax breaks

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/12/22/tim-cook-confirms-tech-met-wi.html

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Why do I read this stuff while I’m eating breakfast? (PS I’m reading this on my Apple iPhone).

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Tax breaks and I suspect H1-B visa expansion.

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greed…pure and simple.

and if they tank the world economy, they don’t seem to care.

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Shameful but unsurprising. So many critical items they could have brought up and they prioritise this.

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Who priorities what? Boing Boing prioritize a tale of corporate greed, or greedy corporate bosses prioritize snaffling tax breaks?

There’s a whole lot of reading into a simple statement there. Tim Cook stated that tax reform is an area of interest - everything else that Corey is spouting is pure supposition. Also, saying that “Apple led and others followed” is a bit rich, Apple certainly wasn’t the first company to use tax law to its advantage.

What’s really great is the link “its R&D and its workforce training” showing that all the cool tech was invented by those hardworking eggheads at the DOE, DARPA, etc. I’d love to see how many of those innovations were created under contract from the DOE with private companies. And part of the deal is that stuff goes public and others can use it. One example is Siri - yes, it was a DARPA funded project, but all they did was provide money. It was a spinoff of CALO project at SRI, and SIRI as we know it was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Tom Gruber. Apple then bought them. So I’m not sure how any of this is ‘starving’ the US.

But hey, Corey gets to bitch about Apple again this morning, so there’s that.

ETA: Also, the click wheel invented by CERN? As far as wikipedia knows, it was created by Synaptics, but even if it was CERN, CERN is not a US organization, so… yeah.

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Oddly, the patriotism and jingoism of today doesn’t give rise to a ‘boycott Apple’ movement. Expecting lawmakers and reality TV personalities to do something isn’t going to bear fruit. The way to end the offshoring of profits is boycott.
Sadly, Apple fans are a rabid and self absorbed lot so that’s never going to happen.

I must not have read the same post as you. I never saw any DARPA, DOE, etc talk. I had read it as the workforce training and R&D came from it’s U.S. workforce educated in the here and benefiting from government programs paid for by taxes like schools, libraries, roads, etc etc etc.

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Ah yes, H1-B visas. They may be dirty immigrants, but they are OUR dirty immigrants with skill set to exploit - use! I meant to say use.

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While I highly doubt any of this will come to good, I don’t think the fact that Apple holds treasury bills is somehow nefariously upending our economy. Bonds are issued by decree of Congress, for crying out loud, and the interest owed is (or should be) accrued at time of issue. I would have thought that them being held by a company with interests (and headquarters) in the US would be preferable than having China buy them. No?

Not when Apple is using money they owe the U.S. taxpayer to buy bonds paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. At least China isn’t buying them with money scammed from the taxpayer by a legal fiction.

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The thing with Trump, if there’s quid you know for sure there’s a quo. Like maybe trading a “tax holiday” on billions of cash for creation of a database of undesirables and unquestioning, active participation in a global surveillance scheme. Peter Thiel has already gotten started. No, seriously, to build an intelligence and database system called FALCON. Well, Thiel practiced with the Analytical Framework for Intelligence for the TSA and ICE etc. For Thiel, it’s a twofer- first it’s a glorious market opportunity, but second it allows him personally to fulfill his ubermensch ambitions. Who among these great tech leaders will tell Trump to fuck off? Who among them will turn down the trade of cash for participation in the new system? Who will refuse to repeat the deal IBM made with the Nazis? Will Tim Cook?

The concerns of civil libertarians and others have been heightened by President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of conservative Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas to be director of the CIA. Pompeo, writing in the Wall Street Journal in January, advocated expanding bulk collection of telephone calling records in pursuit of Islamic State and its sympathizers who could plan attacks on Americans. Pompeo said the records could be combined with “publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database.”

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To be clear, Tim Cook’s actual memo reads:
We have other things that are more business-centric — like tax reform — and something we’ve long advocated for: a simple system.

That’s literally all he says about taxes. You can read into it that Apple’s looking for tax breaks, which wouldn’t surprise me; they are a company, after all, and companies like money. But no, Tim Cook did not “confirm” in an internal memo that they met with Trump to ask for ‘billions in tax breaks’. That’s pure speculation. In other words, fake news.

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Yeah, well the third-hand source Cory is using isn’t what it used to be.

EDIT

To save precious time clicking:

[quote=Apple’s Full Leaked Internal Statement]Last week you joined other tech leaders to meet President-elect Donald Trump. How important is it for Apple to engage with governments?

It’s very important. Governments can affect our ability to do what we do. They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways. What we do is focus on the policies. Some of our key areas of focus are on privacy and security, education. They’re on advocating for human rights for everyone, and expanding the definition of human rights. They’re on the environment and really combating climate change, something we do by running our business on 100 percent renewable energy.

And of course, creating jobs is a key part of what we do by giving people opportunity not only with people that work directly for Apple, but the large number of people that are in our ecosystem. We’re really proud that we’ve created 2 million jobs, just in this country. A great percentage of those are app developers. This gives everyone the power to sell their work to the world, which is an unbelievable invention in and of itself.

We have other things that are more business-centric — like tax reform — and something we’ve long advocated for: a simple system. And we’d like intellectual property reform to try to stop the people suing when they don’t do anything as a company.

There’s a large number of those issues, and the way that you advance them is to engage. Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be. The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So whether it’s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t change things by just yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best. In many ways, it’s a debate of ideas.

We very much stand up for what we believe in. We think that’s a key part of what Apple is about. And we’ll continue to do so.[/quote]

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I wouldn’t be so sure. A tax holiday for tech companies probably just seems like a smart idea from Trump’s perspective. He knows how hard it is to get rich people to pay things they owe.

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What’s up with this rune prompt when i highlight text on boingboing? This is very annoying. Is it just me and some browser malware? I only see it here!

sorry for hijacking this, btw.

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I’m not seeing - and have never seen - that here. Just you not me, I’m afraid.
Yeah, it’s everyone.

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Nope, not just @Synesthesia :

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Huh, so they mystery is why I’m not seeing it then. Edit: now, weirdly, I am seeing it.

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Tim Cook needs to be saying Trump’s support of Ted Cruz’s proposed anti- lgbt legislation is an area of interest. So should Thiel & Grennell.

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