A new report says Apple Inc. uses subsidiaries in Ireland, the Netherlands and other low-tax nations as part of a strategy that enables the technology giant to cut its global tax bill by billions of dollars every year.
A New York Times article published Sunday outlines legal methods used by Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple to avoid paying millions of dollars in federal and state taxes.
It cites a study by a former Treasury Department economist that estimates Apple’s federal tax bill would have been $2 payday loans.4 billion higher last year without such tactics.
The newspaper says Apple paid $3.3 billion in cash taxes globally on $34.2 billion in profits last year. That’s a tax rate of 9.8 percent.
Apple tells the Times that it complies with all laws and accounting rules.
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A federal agency says a remote underwater vehicle is surveying plugged undersea oil wells and looking for natural seepage as authorities seek the source of a 10-mile oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement says it has instructed operators of pipelines in the area to survey their lines.
The sheen is about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Royal Dutch Shell PLC has two production platforms in the area. The company said Thursday it is confident the sheen didn’t originate from its operations instant personal loans guaranteed.
The federal agency said it directed Shell to conduct a seafloor assessment using a robot vehicle. Natural seepage is known to occur in the area.
The sheen was spotted on Wednesday.
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A U.K. house-price index rose to a 19-month high in February as first-time buyers moved to beat the expiration of a property-tax exemption, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
The gauge based on a survey by London-based RICS increased 3 points from the previous month to minus 13, the strongest reading since July 2010, it said in a statement today. Still, with the measure below zero, that indicates more surveyors saw price declines than gains last month.
The figures partly reflect Britons looking to take advantage of a two-year stamp-duty exemption for first-time buyers purchasing a home for less than 250,000 pounds ($390,800) before it ends on March 24. While such
The Swiss central bank spent 17.8 billion francs ($19.5 billion) in 2011 to stem what it called the currency
Russia said Wednesday the world should not draw “hasty conclusions” over Iran’s most recent rebuff of U.N. attempts to investigate allegations the Islamic Republic hid secret work on atomic arms, but the U.S. and its allies accused Tehran of nuclear defiance.
Under international pressure to show restraint, Israel, which has warned repeatedly that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, pointedly urged major world powers to mind their own business, saying it alone would decide what to do to protect the Jewish state’s security.
France said Iran’s continued stonewalling of the International Atomic Energy Agency “is contrary to the intentions” expressed by Tehran in its recent offer to restart talks over its nuclear activities.
In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said while world powers have not yet reached a decision on those talks, Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation “suggests that they have not changed their behavior when it comes to abiding by their international obligations.”
The IAEA’s acknowledgment of renewed failure came early Wednesday at the conclusion of the second trip in less then a month aimed at investigating suspicions of covert Iranian nuclear weapons work. The IAEA team had hoped to speak with key Iranian scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program, break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.
But mission head Herman Nackaerts acknowledged his team “could not find a way forward” in negotiations with Iranian officials. A separate IAEA communique clearly _ if indirectly _ blamed Tehran for the lack of progress.
“We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached,” it quoted IAEA chief Yukiya Amano as saying.
As on the previous visit that ended in early February, Iran did not grant requests by the IAEA mission to visit Parchin _ a military site thought to be used for explosives testing related to nuclear detonations, the statement said
The statement also said that no agreement was reached on how to begin “clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran’s nuclear program, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions.”
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said Wednesday it had new indications of hidden weapons work by Iran.
ISIS said that a cache of telexes to Western high-tech companies from the Physics Research Center in Tehran shows that from about 1990 to 1993, the center sought to purchase equipment and materials that could have been used in weapons research and development.
Tehran has acknowledged that the Physics Research Center in Tehran conducted nuclear-related research, but said the center’s work was limited to efforts to prepare Iran’s military and civilian population for dealing with a nuclear strike.
Iran insists it is using nuclear energy only to generate power, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed Wednesday that possession of atomic arms is a sin as well as “useless, harmful and dangerous.” Iran asserts that the allegations of secret work on developing nuclear arms are based on fabricated U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
But in a 13-page summary late last year, the IAEA listed clandestine activities that he said can either be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons.”
Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high-explosives testing to set off a nuclear charge at Parchin.
Other suspicions include computer modeling of a core of a nuclear warhead and alleged preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile _ a weapon that could reach Israel.
The IAEA trip and its aftermath was accompanied by renewed saber-rattling by Iran and Israel.
Iranian Gen. Mohammed Hejazi, who heads the military’s logistical wing, warned that Iran will “not wait for enemies to take action against us.”
“We will use all our means to protect our national interests,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.
His comments followed Iran’s announcement of war games to practice protecting nuclear and other sensitive sites, the latest military maneuver viewed as a message to the U.S. and Israel that the Islamic Republic is ready both to defend itself and to retaliate against an armed strike.
Israel and the U.S. have said military force remains a last-ditch option to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but while Washington has recently tamped down its rhetoric _ and is thought to be urging Israel to practice restraint _ the Jewish state remains bellicose.
Russia, too, warned Israel against the consequences of attacking Iran, with Deputy Foreign Minister Gennyadi Gatilov telling the ITAR-Tass news agency Wednesday that such a strike “would be a catastrophe not only for the region but for the whole system of international relations.”
But Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rebuffed both Washington and Moscow, telling Israel’s Channel 3 TV news the issue “is not their business.”
“The security of the citizens of Israel, the future of the state of Israel, this is the responsibility of the Israeli government,” he said. “We will make the best decision for the Israeli interest.”
Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, warned the risk of military conflict was rising _ and not necessarily through the threat of direct Israeli attack.
“There is an escalation dynamic under way, especially in the Persian Gulf, where you could have a conflict arising from an accident, a misunderstanding, from a local commander acting on his own initiative and I think that’s the problem,” Kile said.
In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said Tehran’s continued stonewalling of the probe, now in its fourth year, “is another missed opportunity for Iran” to ease suspicions about its nuclear goals and reconcile with the rest of the world. Nadal said Iran’s refusal to cooperate on the issue “is contrary to the intentions” of Iran’s recent offer to restart nuclear talks after a series of abortive meetings over the past two years.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Iran’s intransigence “is the path the leads to further international isolation.” But German officials were cautious when asked about the possibility of imposing yet more sanctions against Iran in response to the latest setback.
Britain, which would join the U.S., China, Russia, France and Germany in any nuclear negotiations with Iran, said it wasn’t yet clear what impact the IAEA visit’s failure might have on the international community’s response to Tehran’s recent offer of renewed talks.
“We share the IAEA’s disappointment. The IAEA genuinely wants to make progress and we want the Iranians to engage in meaningful talks,” a spokesman for Britain’s foreign ministry said on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
Russia urged renewed efforts to engage Iran on its suspected secret nuclear work.
“We must not make hasty conclusions,” Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told reporters, calling for the IAEA to “continue contacts” with Iran on the issue.
The IAEA said no further talks were planned for the moment. But Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh also said “more time was needed” for final agreement on the issue.
Timothy F. Geithner, who took over the Treasury Department in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and oversaw the almost doubling of U.S. public debt, has done better for investors than Robert Rubin while falling short of Henry Paulson.
Since Geithner assumed office in January 2009, returns on Treasuries have exceeded bonds of other countries by 0.3 percentage point on an annualized rate, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. That
Australia added the most workers in 14 months in January and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined, spurring investors to increase bets the central bank will extend an interest-rate pause.
Payrolls rose by 46,300 last month, the most since November 2010, after a revised drop in December of 35,600, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. That compares with the median estimate for an increase of 10,000 in a Bloomberg News survey of 25 economists. The jobless rate fell to 5.1 percent.
Stocks fell as traders boosted the odds Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens will keep the benchmark borrowing cost unchanged March 6 after he unexpectedly paused at 4.25 percent rather than cut last week as resource investment drives growth. The central bank lowered the rate at back-to-back meetings last quarter as Europe
In Silicon Valley’s white-hot competition for tech talent, programmers can face a daily barrage of calls from recruiters seeking to woo them to rival companies with offers of better pay and perks.
But workers for some of the biggest names in the business claim their phones fell silent because of a conspiracy among their employers. And they claim the world’s biggest tech icon was at the center.
A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose claims senior executives at Google Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar and Apple Inc. violated antitrust laws by entering into secret anti-poaching agreements not to hire each other’s best workers. In doing so, the suit contends the companies were able to keep wages artificially low by preventing bidding wars for the best employees.
The plaintiffs also claim that company e-mails show Steve Jobs himself sought and orchestrated at least some of the so-called “gentlemen’s agreements” while Apple’s CEO.
“I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple,” then-Google chief executive Eric Schmidt wrote in a 2007 email cited by the plaintiffs. The email was originally furnished to the U.S. Justice Department, which investigated similar allegations in 2010. The same email included a forwarded message from Jobs complaining that Google’s recruiting department was trying to lure away an Apple engineer.
“Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?” Schmidt wrote. Google’s director of staffing replied that the recruiter “will be terminated within the hour.”
The companies’ attorneys said the facts even as presented by the plaintiffs show no evidence of a conspiracy.
Rather, they said in court filings that some companies had separate one-to-one pacts among themselves as they worked together on various business ventures.
“The obvious explanation for the existence of these agreements were the collaborations,” said Apple defense attorney George Riley, as the two sides squared off Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Riley told Judge Lucy Koh that such arrangements were common.
The case hinges on a practice described in court documents as “cold-calling.” Under the practice, recruiters from one company will call an employee at another company who has the skills the company needs. The practice can lead to bidding wars as workers play the companies off one another to get the highest pay.
Cold-calling, the suit contends, helps workers get a sense of what they’re worth in a free market for employment in which all the companies are competing against one another for top employees. When the cold-calling stops, workers lose the knowledge and the leverage they could otherwise use to demand higher pay.
The Justice Department’s 2010 investigation included all the same companies except Lucasfilm, and the plaintiffs in some ways mimic the language from the department’s original case. The companies settled without admitting any wrongdoing but agreed not to enter into future agreements preventing them from cold-calling each other’s employees to recruit them.
Because the Justice Department’s case was settled quietly without any public dispute, court records contain little detail about any specific alleged agreements among companies.
Some of those details did come to light, however, in a recent filing by the plaintiffs, which quotes emails they obtained from the companies that had previously been given to the Justice Department business cards.
In a 2005 email describing a purported agreement between former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen and his then-counterpart at Apple, an Adobe human resources executive wrote: “Bruce and Steve Jobs have an agreement that we are not to solicit ANY Apple employees, and vice versa,” according to court documents.
Ex-Palm Inc. CEO Ed Colligan wrote to Jobs in 2007: “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” the plaintiffs’ filing said.
In internal company communications, Intel CEO and Google board member Paul Otellini described a gentleman’s agreement between the two companies: “Let me clarify. We have nothing signed. We have a handshake `no recruit’” between himself and then-Google CEO Schmidt. “I would not like this broadly known.”
Defense attorneys contend the emails are being distorted by the plaintiffs and show nothing beyond legitimate one-to-one agreements. Apple declined to comment.
“Intel disagrees with the allegations contained in the private litigation related to recruiting practices and plans to conduct a vigorous defense,” said Sumner Lemon, an Intel spokesman.
Adobe said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The other companies named in the suit did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
Whichever side prevails, the case underscores the high wages talented tech workers can command in Silicon Valley, where the tech industry added thousands of jobs last year. According to federal labor statistics, mid-level tech workers in the region such as computer security specialists, web developers and network architects earn more money than anywhere else in the country, with average annual salaries topping $110,000.
Many of those workers could get thousands more if the case goes their way, lead plaintiff’s attorney Joseph Saveri said. Given the potentially tens of thousands of workers affected if the plaintiffs succeed in turning the suit into a class-action case, Saveri said the combined damages for the companies could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars if decided at trial.
Such penalties would sink many companies. But Apple recently reported cash reserves of more than $97 billion. Google also has billions in cash on hand.
One anti-trust attorney not involved in the case doubts the companies have much to worry about anyway.
Antitrust cases that revolve around hiring practices are difficult to win, said David Balto, a Washington, D.C.-based antitrust lawyer who investigated Microsoft as a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in the 1990s. Among the legal challenges they face is defining who exactly makes up the class of workers harmed by the alleged violations, since people with different jobs have different employment options, he said.
“I don’t think anybody at these companies is losing a nanosecond of sleep because of this lawsuit,” Balto said.
Canada is looking at alternatives for exporting its oil since U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was blocking a pipeline from Alberta to Texas.
A pipeline executive said Thursday that the company was weighing whether to build a segment of the line _ from Oklahoma to Texas _ that wouldn’t require U.S. State Department approval. And government officials said Canada would push harder for a pipeline to the Pacific Coast, where oil could be shipped to China.
At the same time, Canadian officials said, they are hopeful the 1,700-mile (2,740-kilometer) Keystone XL pipeline will be built.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford, the leader of the Canadian province that has the world’s third-largest reserves of oil, said that while Canada is disappointed at Obama’s decision, the government believes Obama has made it clear the U.S. would consider a new Keystone XL pipeline application with a new routing.
Obama called Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain that the decision on Wednesday was not on the merits of the pipeline but rather on the “arbitrary nature” of a Feb. 21 deadline set by Republican legislators as part of a tax measure he signed, Harper’s office said.
“The fact that the president has said that the decision was not based on the merits we take as a signal that there is an opportunity to make a decision that is in the national interest that allows the project to go ahead,” Redford told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., which proposed the pipeline, said Thursday it was considering building the pipeline in segments, with the first connecting an existing pipeline in Oklahoma to refineries in Texas.
The Obama administration had suggested development of an Oklahoma-to-Texas line to alleviate an oil glut at a Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub.
“If our shippers are interested in building that portion of the pipeline (first), we would look at that,” TransCanada President and CEO Russ Girling told The Associated Press in an interview.
Obama’s rejection of Keystone XL “clearly gives flexibility to do that,” Girling said. He emphasized that the company had made no decisions.
U.S. officials have said that building the pipeline in sections could speed up the process since the U.S. State Department would not be involved if the pipeline does not cross the U.S.-Canada border.
Girling’s remarks were in contrast to a statement TransCanada issued on Wednesday declaring it would reapply for a presidential permit to build the full pipeline. Girling said the company still expects to reapply, but “will take our time for how to refile it.”
He said a new route that avoids environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska should be made public in a matter of weeks
In Washington, the proposed $7 billion pipeline has become a political hot potato.
Republicans _ who earlier put the president in the awkward position of having to make a decision on it before Feb. 21 _ now hope to force Obama to deal with it yet again before next November’s presidential election. He wants to put it off beyond that.
Republicans are looking to drive a wedge between Obama and two key Democratic constituencies. Some labor unions support the pipeline as a job creator, while environmentalists fear it could lead to an oil spill disaster.
The Alberta-to-Texas pipeline proposed by TransCanada would carry 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta across six U.S. states to the Texas Gulf Coast, which has numerous refineries.
Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said it’s clear the process is not yet over and said Canada is hopeful the pipeline will be accepted on its merits.
Redford said Obama’s decision adds urgency to Enbridge’s proposed pipeline to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia that would allow Canadian oil to be shipped to Asia for the first time.
The project is undergoing a regulatory review in Canada.
“Asian markets are a very viable alternative. I say alternative, I probably shouldn’t. It’s not an either or situation. There’s an opportunity here for us to grow our markets in both directions and we’d like to be able to do that,” Redford said.
Canadian officials see the pipeline to the Pacific coast as critical as Canada seeks to diversify its energy customer base beyond the United States, which Canada relies on for 97 percent of its energy exports.
Alberta has more than 170 billion barrels of oil reserves. Daily production of 1.5 million barrels from the oil sands is expected to increase to 3.7 million in 2025. Only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have more reserves.
Sinopec, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, has a stake in Enbridge’s proposed $5.5 billion Northern Gateway Pipeline. Chinese state-owned companies also have invested more than $16 billion in the oil sands in the last two years.
Tens of billions more are expected to be invested in Canada’s oil sands if the Pacific pipeline is built.
There is fierce environmental and aboriginal opposition to the Pacific pipeline, but Harper’s government has called it a nation-building project that is crucial to the country’s goal of becoming an energy super power.
The European Central Bank
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