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Comment by thematt | Hacker News Reader

Why should they pay tax on that money? It was generated in a foreign country by a foreign corporation and already subjected to foreign taxes.

The US didn't expend resources helping them make that money, therefore it doesn't deserve any of it. If anything, we should be encouraging them to bring it back here.

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Apple and Google are foreign corporations?

Also, I know people who live and work in foreign countries and haven't stepped foot in the US for decades who still pay tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to the US each year in taxes. So yeah, it's unfair that large, American corporations are somehow exempt.

I'm as tax-phobic as any red-blooded yank, but if we are going to demand ever increasing government services and entitlements (including corporate welfare), we better be willing to pay for it.

Apple and Google are not foreign corporations, but they own foreign subsidiaries which are responsible for doing business in their respective countries.

Apple and Google are not foreign corporations

You said it.

That is not correct. Did you actually read any of the links above? Apple, Google, Microsoft and others shift billions of dollars a year in profits ON SALES IN THE UNITED STATES out of the US and to low tax or no tax countries using clever internal sales agreements with their own subsidiaries over intellectual property licensing. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...

I just meant in the general sense. Google needs to pay their taxes too, but tech companies aren't the only ones evading taxes and getting away with it. Specifically this tax? Maybe not. But that wasn't the point.

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