According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple (neé Apple Computer) “is the most valuable company” in the world. On the heels of its quarterly report last week, stock in Apple reached nearly $620 per share before settling back to end the week at $602.
The WSJ reported that Apple “posted a 94% profit jump to $11.6 billion and a 58.9% revenue increase to $39.2 billion.”
The New York Times published a long piece looking at how Apple — cleverly, but legally — has built a tax strategy that saves it billions of dollars.
The Times reported that “the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent.”
“By comparison, Wal-Mart last year paid worldwide cash taxes of $5.9 billion on its booked profits of $24.4 billion, a tax rate of 24 percent, which is about average for non-tech companies.”
Apple, in its response pointed to jobs (not Steve): “By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers – from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers.”
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