{"id":24369,"date":"2014-03-13T07:20:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T07:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=24369"},"modified":"2014-03-13T07:18:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T07:18:43","slug":"apple-and-microsoft-among-us-tech-giants-coining-it-offshore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/03\/13\/apple-and-microsoft-among-us-tech-giants-coining-it-offshore\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple and Microsoft among US tech giants coining it offshore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebureauinvestigates.com\/2014\/03\/12\/apple-and-microsoft-among-us-tech-giants-reaping-interest-payments-on-offshore-cash\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\">Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports this morning<\/a> that:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.3em;\">The US government makes vast interest payments to technology giants including Apple and Microsoft on the billions of dollars they shelter from tax offshore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A trawl of Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures shows that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Cisco Systems hold $163 billion in US government debt, earning these companies substantial sums in interest.<\/p>\n<p>This means American taxpayers in effect pay interest to tech giants on their offshore cash which is held there for tax reduction purposes.<\/p>\n<p>There is no suggestion that any of the companies\u2019 activities are in any way unlawful.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You couldn&#39;t make it up, could you? These companies hide billions offshore to avoid paying US tax and then lend the money they&#39;re hiding to the US Treasury to help make good the deficit their behaviour is fuelling, and get paid for the privilege of doing so.<\/p>\n<p>When systems get this rotten the problem is they get in danger of collapse. That&#39;s what troubles me about this story. It questions the viability of government and society itself when a few take it for, to use the vernacular, such a blarant ride. That is a precursor to serious instability and breakdown. <\/p>\n<p>The US has to overcome these blatant abuses if its<span style=\"line-height: 1.3em;\"> society is to survive, but the portents are not good. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Worry, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebureauinvestigates.com\/2014\/03\/12\/apple-and-microsoft-among-us-tech-giants-reaping-interest-payments-on-offshore-cash\/\" target=\"_self\" title=\"\">after you have read the story in full.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports this morning that: The US government makes vast interest payments to technology giants including Apple and Microsoft on the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/03\/13\/apple-and-microsoft-among-us-tech-giants-coining-it-offshore\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,10,32,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-havens","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}