Apple Paid Just 2% Tax On Overseas Profits
5:53pm UK, Sunday 04
November 2012
Apple paid less than 2%
tax on its overseas profits, documents have revealed, after the technology
giant slashed the amount foreign taxmen receive.
The iPad and iPhone
creator paid $713bn (£445m) in corporation tax outside the US in the year to
September 29 - despite foreign pre-tax earnings soaring more than 50% to$36.8bn
(£23bn).
Papers filed with US
regulators revealed Apple's overseas tax rate fell to 1.9%, compared to 2.5%
the previous year amid a headline corporation tax rate in the UK of 24% and 35%
in the US.
The slide in its overseas
tax rate comes as the company sold 125 million iPhones, 58 million iPads and
13.5 million MacBook laptops worldwide.
Apple is the latest
company to come under scrutiny for overseas tax payments after Amazon, Starbucks,
Facebook and Google.
Coffee giant Starbucks
reportedly paid just £8.6m in corporation tax in 14 years of trading in Britain
- and nothing in the last three years.
America's top five
technology companies - including Facebook, Amazon and eBay - legally avoided
around £850m in corporation tax last year, according to a Sunday Times
investigation.
Companies are able to
sidestep the taxman by constructing complex global frameworks that allow them
to move money through offshore subsidiaries and locations.
Apple channels much of its
business in Britain and Europe through a subsidiary based on an industrial
estate in County Cork, Ireland, The Sunday Times reported.
Ireland's corporation tax
is about half the level of the UK.
Apple recorded a 45% rise
in turnover to $156bn (£97bn) in the year, helping deliver a 63% rise in
pre-tax profits to £34.8bn ($55.8bn).
It paid $13.3bn (£8.3bn)
in federal and state taxes in the US.
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