If shareholders do not demand the money as a dividend and prefer instead to have it kept in the company's control, then so be it.
Shareholders in Apple want Apple to be able to make big investments or acquisitions and are willing to let the money sit there rather than take it as a dividend. This would not be true for most firms.
It sure would be in Jib Inc, the company that will launch about 5 minutes after no corporate taxes and will handle all of my personal finances. :)
I'd pay myself a very basic salary, and if I needed emergency cash I could always borrow against my holdings in Jib Inc until I could adjust my salary appropriately.
That would let me defer paying tax indefinitely on anything that I don't need for day to day living, and I would be able to play the margins on a number of major expenses as well, with very little overhead work, since I dont need to worry about taxes for corporate income anymore.
Ya if you make a one person company to avoid taxes, the second the irs looks at it you're gonna have a bad time. This is already true today, and would be especially more true if they drastically lowered corporate taxes.
"So be it", you say. In other words, average people will need to pay those taxes, instead of very rich people that don't even care about getting dividends. Seems fair to me.
The taxes that, according to you, should only be paid by individuals and not by corporations - thus allowing rich individuals to postpone paying taxes as long as they want, and forcing not-so-rich individuals to cover what's missing.
Taxes would still get paid on capital gains when Apple's stock price goes up. As long you raise the capital gains tax to compensate for getting rid of the corporate income tax, that scenario doesn't cause any problems.
They paid income tax on the profits (at least the profits earned in the USA). Apple was the number one tax payer on the list by a wide margin. Are they supposed to be taxed on their bank balances also?
they're already doing it, so this isn't much of a 'what if'. the problem is that money is kept offshore and never spent, because it's at risk of getting taxed immediately upon repatriation.
my understanding is that is absolutely not true. Apple doesn't have $90B or whatever sitting in a bank vault in Ireland. That money goes to a bank in NY, and Apple has access to it and uses it, though that money can't be used freely as money which Apple has paid US taxes on. It is still part of the economy.
Shareholders in Apple want Apple to be able to make big investments or acquisitions and are willing to let the money sit there rather than take it as a dividend. This would not be true for most firms.