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Apple reports fourth quarter results

(www.apple.com)
176 points mfiguiere | 3 comments | 30 Oct 25 20:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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lapcat ◴[30 Oct 25 20:45 UTC] No.45765104[source]▶
This stuck out like a sore thumb to me:

Q4 2024: Income before provision for income taxes $29.610 billion, Provision for income taxes $14.874 billion

Q4 2025: Income before provision for income taxes $32.804 billion, Provision for income taxes $5.338 billion

[EDIT:] The 2024 taxes were actually an aberration.

"the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024 related to the impact of the reversal of the European General Court’s State Aid decision" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-reports-fourth-...

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FredPret ◴[30 Oct 25 21:42 UTC] No.45765726[source]▶
Corporate income tax is one of those ideas that are immensely popular politically ("someone who is not me will pay billions to benefit me? yay!") but not supported by economic theory or real economic outcomes. Rent control / other price controls is another one ("No more rent increases for me, yay!").

Personal income taxes are a better choice according to [0] and that makes sense if you think about it. Let companies go wild creating wealth; eventually the company matures, growth slows, and instead of reinvesting, the money mostly gets paid out to employees and owners as salaries, dividends, or stock buybacks. That's the point where it's most efficient to tax it.

[0] https://www.economicsobservatory.com/which-taxes-are-best-an...

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/primers/primer-not-all-taxe...

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aauchter ◴[30 Oct 25 21:56 UTC] No.45765867[source]▶
Correct. Corporate income tax is really a tax on shareholders (alternative to paying tax is paying shareholders a dividend). The corporate tax rate hits all owners regardless of income/wealth. That includes pension funds, 401ks, small investors, etc. Proponents of progressive taxes should be against corporate tax and in favor of income tax, property tax, etc.
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1. FredPret ◴[30 Oct 25 22:01 UTC] No.45765910[source]▶
It also takes money away from the corporation, when they should be doing one of these:

- spend their profits to try and grow, but fail; thus spreading their capital into the rest of the economy

- spend their profits to try and grow, and succeed; not only spreading capital but creating new wealth that will eventually work its way around to the shareholders

- return it to shareholders, where it gets taxed

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2. what ◴[30 Oct 25 22:24 UTC] No.45766120[source]▶
Isn’t that how it already works? They can spend all of their profits or pay taxes on profit and sit on the rest?
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3. FredPret ◴[30 Oct 25 22:51 UTC] No.45766326[source]▶
Depends on what it gets spent on - capital purchases dont reduce net income. You can write it off, but there are rules limiting how much.

So you could have a situation where you have $1m in profit, and you want to buy a $1m machine, but the machine goes on your balance sheet and not your income statement, so your books still show $1m in profit, even though you now have no cash. And now you still have to pay tax on the $1m.

Now, in the next year, the rules allow you to write off say $200k of that machine, reducing your profit by that much. Eventually, you get to write off much / all of the machine.

But cash is king, and on a cash basis, the tax man is doing very much better than the business in this scenario.

Better to dispense with all the accounting intrigues, tax corporations at 0%, and just tax dividends, buybacks, and salaries.