Taxes are Optional

Another day, another story of massive tax avoidance:

Apple paid less than 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, its filing with US regulators has shown.

The company paid $713m (£445m) in the year to 29 September on foreign pre-tax profits of $36.8bn, a rate of 1.9%.

 The key line comes later in the report, though:

It has not been suggested that any of their tax avoidance schemes are illegal.

It's okay, though.  It's not as if countries around the world are in some sort of budget crisis, or anything.

Apple is USAlien, and so qualifies as a person under the Fourteenth Amendment and associated Supreme Court rulings.  I lived in the US for seven years, and I'm pretty sure I had to cough up more than that.  Still, if Apple had to pay a fair tax share, it might not be able to afford enough lawyers.

It's worth noting that Apple is far from the only company to engage in these kind of activities.  (Hello blog overlord Google!)  They're just today's headline.