"Yes, Apple pays next to nothing on a large portion of its revenues. Look at all the foreign revenues that are funneled through Ireland at next to no cost (which is what that article was about)."
International tax law is tricky. The country the company is located in says that it has paid everything it owes though. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand though, the tax rate in the U.S..
"And the numbers I found for Apple's total tax were a tad lower, 22%-24% or so."
Well, I calculated the numbers myself using information found on Apple's income statements. I trust my own numbers.
"In fact, average effective US corporate tax rate is around 21.9%, which is just above that of France and Germany, and not far off the global average of 17.4%"
Debatable.
"Comparing 1965 to 2015"
Why are we comparing from 1960 to 2015 now...? I talked about 1960-2015. You can't say my data was wrong because you change the years we're taking data from. That's not how that works.
"total tax revenues went from $167,022 million to $4,754,120 million - an increase of 2,746%. Corporate taxes went from $27,390 million to $395,888 million - an increase of 1,345%. During that time period the statutory tax rate decreased from 46% (or more....could only go back as far as 1981) down to 35%. The corporate tax as a share of total revenues decreased from 16% to 8%."
I'll trust your data, but the reason for the discrepancy between yours and mine (aside from the different years) was that I was talking about Federal taxes only while you included State and Local taxes.
"So where was this increase in tax revenue mainly placed? On workers"
Yep. Through an increased Payroll tax.
"Average hourly wage in the US for regular workers increased from $2.50 an hour to $21 an hour over the same timeframe - an increase of 740% (Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI)."
That data says it is for production and non-supervisory employees. That's oddly specific. Why do we care about hat group of workers wages in particular and not about anyone else's?
"But their share of total gross domestic income has been decreasing, from 49% to 43% (Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA)"
That data is for all employees it looks like. That is a different group than in the hourly wage source.
"What's driving this? Higher income tax burdens."
Yes, more Payroll taxes!
"You are correct that social security has increased - 4,973% from $22,192 million to $1,125,923 million, in fact! But the burden for this increase is larger on the employee (5,807% increase) than on the employer (4,317% increase)."
The cause of corporate tax as a percentage of total revenues declining!
"Capital gains has seen the largest increase over this timeframe, 6,901%, but is still laughably small at $174,550 million."
I wouldn't call $175 billion annually "laughably small". But capital gains is different from corporate income tax anyway.
"Now lets compare to Ireland, home of the lowest tax rate in Europe. Let's see where it got them."
I think there may be at least 1 or 2 more things than just the corporate income tax rate that go into determining economic growth over a span of decades. But, that's just a hunch I have.
"1965 - Irish tax base of a whopping $317 million. Corporate tax of $29 million, 9% of total. After they invented themselves into a tax haven, tax base of $60,356 million (growth of 778%), corporate tax revenue of $6,873 million (growth of 993%), 11% of total revenues."
Umm, 317 million to 60,356 million is growth of 18,939.75% and 29 million to 6,873 million is growth of 23,600%.
"To me, that's not impressive."
To me, it is.
"The growth rates are much, much lower than that of the United States."
Using the numbers you provided, they're much much higher.
"The percentage of total revenues isn't much different from the United States"
For the third time, percentage of total revenue means zilch.
'Ireland needs these rates because without them, they don't have jobs, and jobs is what they care about. US has no such need, really, because this fear of inversions is completely overblown."
Without them, they have less jobs. The threat of inversions is real. That's why the FTC is constantly changing the rules to prevent them.
"The total number of corporate inversion in the past 35 years is??? 50."
Well, to be exact, it is 86 companies that have somehow shifted their place of incorporation for tax reasons since 1982, with 61 of those being classified as straight up inversions. How many of those companies were worth many billions of dollars though? Companies such as Medtronic ($110.91B) and Actavis ($79.76B)? You ass up the value of those 86 companies and that is a huge amount of value the U.S. economy lost due to unfavorable tax policies.
"Tim Hortons is owned by Burger King, and was originally a US company"
They actually merged and are both owned by a parent company which is Canadian, so Burger king isn't really a U.S. company any more. Both it and Tim Horton's are 100% Canadian.
"So, in sum, corporations are not paying enough"
Based on??? The sole fact that corporate tax revenue makes up a smaller share of total federal tax revenues today than in 1960 (or 1965)? How many times do I have to say that that figure could not be more irrelevant. But, even if it were, why would the rate arbitrarily set in the 60s be the correct one? How do we know that one wasn't too high and the one we have today is better? There's no basis for saying that because the tax rate used to be higher, it must be too low today.
"Their profits are growing faster than wages are growing"
1. No data has been provided to conclude this. 2. If it were true, why is it automatically an issue that needs to be corrected? 3. Profits and wages are determined from very different inputs. Profits have to deal with such things as the coast of your inputs, the demand from your customers, and the supply from your competitors. Wages are determined based on the productivity of the workforce and the supply and demand for labor. They can very well move in the same direction, opposite directions, or have one move up or down while the other remains constant. All of this is natural because they are not dependent on one another.
"they're pushing the tax burden for the country off themselves and onto workers in various ways"
Why should they bear any part of the tax burden, let alone the specific amount they have had in the past? The people who own the corporations already pay taxes on the profits they receive from them? Why is the double taxation at the corporate level even a thing?
"Either jack up the corporate rate or jack up the capital gains rate, but something has to be done."
Lower both, cut spending.