Surprisingly, such a filing simply does not exist today. As Bloomberg View colleague Matt Levine put it, the technique of many multinational companies is to “convince Country A that your income is earned in Country B, and convince Country B that your income is earned in Country A, because then neither of them will tax it.” We can’t see the whole puzzle without seeing the individual pieces of Country A and Country B. Apple’s net income in the last 12 months was more than double the figure reported by the next most-profitable company in the S&P 500, Berkshire Hathaway.Īnd paying the most taxes, or all the taxes that Apple owes, doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple pays all it should. Of course the company with the biggest profits should pay the largest taxes. That’s not far off the average over the same time period for Walmart, which has less than one-third of Apple’s reported net income.Įven if Cook is right about being the biggest taxpayer, it’s beside the point.
Its average disclosed cash taxes paid since 2010 was US$7.7 billion annually. Using a different SEC disclosure, of cash taxes paid, Apple hasn’t been the biggest taxpayer among S&P 500 companies for any of the last six years. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. About half of S&P 500 companies had a higher reported effective tax rate in their most recent fiscal year, Bloomberg data show. Apple disclosed an effective tax rate of 26 per cent - meaning its accountants record 26 cents of estimated tax liability for each dollar of reported pre-tax income. That is the biggest provision for income taxes among S&P 500 companies, according to Bloomberg data, although those financial disclosures may have little relationship to Apple’s cash taxes paid.Įven using those SEC disclosures that Apple highlights, on income tax provision per dollar the company is merely average. Apple likes to point to its SEC financial disclosures, which say the company allocated more than US$19 billion in estimated tax liability for its fiscal year ended in September 2015. This line has the benefit of possibly being true and impossible to verify. Article contentįor years, Apple CEO Tim Cook’s go-to tax defense is that his company is the country’s (or the world’s) largest taxpayer.