[jeffbax]

Until the tax law change this year, US companies were generally at a tax dis-advantage. Whether or not tech companies were more advantaged I don't think is as simple to say as the headlines would want you to believe but a large swath of US companies were at a global disadvantage for taxes. Effective Corporate taxes in the US were of the highest, and now they're more toward the global average.

[nrow2]

They weren't at a disadvantage outside the US, that is the whole point. Apple's effective tax rate on profits in the EU, before the EC ruled otherwise, was less than 0.05% between 2011 and 2014. Money which they are using to compete in the rest of the world. For example from Apple's SEC Form 10-K, 2017:

"[...] undistributed foreign earnings, a substantial portion of which was generated by subsidiaries organized in Ireland, for which no U.S. taxes are provided when such earnings are intended to be indefinitely reinvested outside the U.S."

http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=320193-17-7... http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm

[jeffbax]

I wasn't talking about Apple specifically as the nature of digital companies is different, but US Corporations on the whole faced a ~38% tax rate globally vs. most countries being closer to 20% and this is something even the Obama administration wanted to change / partisan angles about this are dumb.