Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jjeaff 2278 days ago
Carnival Cruises is headquartered in Miami. They register their ships in other countries for various reasons. One of which is taxes. But the company itself is based in the US.
3 comments

The pay no taxes.

Carnival Corp and Norwegian both posted negative income tax expenses — that is, they received more in refunds or deductions than they paid or set aside for taxes — with Carnival reporting an income tax expense of $71 million and Norwegian reporting an $18.9 million tax benefit.

They don’t contribute to the public fisc in good times, they should have no call on it when times are tough.

So like Amazon? Have they never paid taxes? Because that quote seems to be referring to a single year?
They pay a ton income tax and sales tax.
What do they pay sales tax on that makes any material difference? And what's their income tax as a percentage of revenue?
Headquartered in Miami, but incorporated in Panama.
That doesn't matter. If you have operations in the US, you have to pay US taxes. Now they may be getting around those taxes, but they have to file.
Yes, they have to file, but it does matter:

> In general, under Section 883 of the Internal Revenue Code, certain non-U.S. corporations (such as our North American cruise ship businesses) are not subject to U.S. federal income tax or branch profits tax on U.S. source income derived from, or incidental to, the international operation of a ship or ships

From https://www.carnivalcorp.com/financial-information/annual-re...

Indeed, there's a bustling maritime law industry in the state of Florida that would die if the cruise industry were to fail or leave.
Are you arguing that we should bail out the cruise industry to save the lawyers?
I think there is a missing /s