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Comment by d35007 | Hacker News Reader

I'm no tax expert, but as far as I know, 2017's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) made it possible for companies like Apple to repatriate money held by overseas subsidiaries without paying US taxes on it. It did so by exempting foreign earnings from US tax via a 100% deductible on dividends received from foreign subsidiaries. It also levied a one-time tax, payable over 8 years, on money earned by foreign subsidiaries prior to the TCJA, regardless of whether the companies actually repatriated that money. This is called "deemed repatriation" and you can see it in Apple's quarterly reports.

Long story short, investing in renewable energy might have some tax benefits for Apple, but I don't think it has much (if anything) to do with repatriating overseas cash.

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How is an ex post facto law like that constitutional?

Ex post facto deals with criminal cases and things that generally negatively affect an individual.

"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." I don't see how this could not apply to a tax, but butchering the meaning of clearly worded clauses of the constitution is SOP for the courts so who knows.

Both “Bill of Attainder” and “ex post facto law” were existing legal terms of art at the time the provision was written, and both were then (and remain) terms of art relating to criminal law.

So congress could effectively fine people for things they did in the past with new taxes, and it would be completely constitutional. Seems like a pretty bad loophole.

> So congress could effectively fine people for things they did in the past with new taxes, and it would be completely constitutional.

If it is effectively a criminal fine, no, that would still be an ex post facto law; the Supreme Court has struck down at least one retroactive federal tax on that ground [0]. And, more commonly, retroactive tax increases have been invalidated on other grounds (mostly, substantive due process under the 5th, or for state action 14th, amendment.)

[0] But note that sneaking in what is effectively a criminal penalty as a tax is also unconstitutional if it isn't retroactive, since it will still violate a host of other Constitutional protections applicable to criminal punishment, so any tax struck down as ex post facto would necessarily be struck down even if it applied only to future “taxable” events.

An ex post facto law is one criminalizing past conduct or increasing criminal penalties for past conduct; retroactive tax increases are not ex post facto laws.

Looking into it it looks like it actually taxed the held money, not really doing anything retroactive.

And I see an essay about the law calling wealth taxes unconstitutional but that doesn't seem to be consensus.

That makes more sense then.

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