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

boing
#13

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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#14

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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#15

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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#17

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!

Screenshot 2016-12-22 13.36.29.png700×381 82 KB

sorry for hijacking this, btw.

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#18

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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#19

Nope, not just @Synesthesia :

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#20

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

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#21

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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#22

This link was the one behind "its R&D and its workforce training " in Corey’s post. Scroll down to the “What makes the iPhone so smart” bit.

#23

Interesting…

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#24

Suggestion: Prior to reading any Trump-related news, make sure that a big bucket is by your side.

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#25

OMG. Is this going to be the new “selfie?” Not every photograph is a selfie and not every clickbaitey headline is fake news.

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#26

Lies are fake news.

The headline, as well as the post from Cory, are untrue and are therefore fake news.

Invented facts are not “clickbait”, they’re lies.

(are people referring to photos of things other than themselves as ‘selfies’ now? that’s just… ignorant)

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#27

Thiel is too rich to worry about these laws.

Also is ThinkContext posting here a spambot?

#28

Thanks for that. It still seems to me that the Apple tech was invented and developed by people who benefited from the social programs and infrastructure we U.S. taxpayers provide and to which Apple does not contribute.

I’ll just say it. Apple is a terrible company who is cynically ripping off the U.S. taxpayer, selling products made by sweatshop wage slaves who live and work in horrific conditions, and using the money they don’t pay in taxes to further extract income from the taxpayers via bonds. They should be boycotted and Apple device users should be shunned as being part of the problem, supporters of human rights violations, and a drain on our national resources.

#29

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#30

I can’t speak for the rest of the filthy foreigners, but I’m staying out of the US for the next four years.

I mean, the last time I worked in the US it was through NAFTA, not H1-B, so it’s not entirely the situation you’re describing (and who knows what’s happening to NAFTA under Trump). But even under Obama, I was acutely aware that my stay in the US could be ended for arbitrary and capricious reasons with minimal notice.

With Trump in power, pretty much the only thing I can think of that would motivate me to relocate back to the US is if I literally couldn’t get a job here in Canada.

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#31

Where are you from, Canada? The UK? If so there is little motivation for you to come to the US. You have it just as good or even better, more or less. Someone from India might not share your pessimism.

I honestly don’t think they will screw with the H1-B stuff much because it makes rich people richer. They generally are able to hire skilled workers for less. Heck I honestly don’t think Trump will do much on illegal immigration, as I bet his hotels etc save money hiring illegals (this has been my theory on the Republican stance for awhile, they are mostly talk, as cheap labor who can’t even unionize is good for business to exploit.)

I am not intimately familiar with the process, but I know that it can be a huge pain. Conversely, I looked into working in the UK 15 years ago and it was like Noooopppeeee… probably not going to happen with my skill set.

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#32

I’m Canadian - you’re right that being in Canada doesn’t leave you with the same kind of motivation to relocate that living in some other countries might. For me, the very best I could hope for would be maybe a 50% salary increase, which I don’t currently urgently need.

On the flip side, I’m a pretty generic looking cis straight white dude, so the stakes and risks are lower for me than for basically anyone else who might consider moving to the US.

You’re right that I can’t really imagine them messing too much with H1-B. NAFTA will be interesting - there was so much anti-mexico rhetoric that Trump might actually have to throw his base a bone on that stuff. Even without explicit changes to the H1-B, the pool of available applicants might thin out depending on what happens in the next couple years. If he continues anti-immigrant rhetoric, or if there’s a lot of highly visible anti-immigrant violence, I could imagine that people will be thinking twice about the trade-offs of coming to the US from, for example, India.

#33

The only candidates recently that might have really done something about visas were Kucinich and maybe Sanders. Trump won’t.

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