Proponents of “Territorial” Change Defend Apple’s Practices at Ways and Means Hearing

On Thursday morning, a hearing was held on “Tax Havens, Base Erosion and Profit-Shifting,” by the House Ways and Means Committee, whose chairman, Dave Camp (R-MI), has proposed several types of “territorial” tax systems that CTJ has long argued would make these problems worse.

One of the witnesses, Paul Oosterhuis of Skadden Arps, explained that adoption of one of Camp’s proposals would move the U.S. towards taxing only those profits that come from sales generated in the U.S., which is essentially what Apple accomplished through the complicated tax planning revealed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) last month. Oosterhuis argued that this would be a good result. He said that the taxes it avoided were really taxes on profits from foreign sales, and therefore of no importance to the U.S.

While Chairman Camp seemed to be in full agreement with Oosterhuis, some of the other committee members and another of the witnesses, Ed Kleinbard, pointed out the problems with his approach. Apple’s profits are generated by its research and development, and 95 percent of that activity takes place in the U.S. (Apple outsources the actual manufacture of its products to other companies.) Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois pointed out that this research and development, which seems to be the source of Apple’s profits, would not be possible without the public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers, like our patent protection and other legal protections, our educated workforce and infrastructure.

Kleinbard also pointed out that the U.S. must prevent our corporations from avoiding foreign taxes as well as U.S. taxes. Partly this is because much of the profits that are characterized as “foreign” are really U.S. profits that our corporations have dressed up as “foreign” using the type of practices Apple engages in. Another reason is that lax rules facilitating avoidance of foreign taxes makes foreign investment more attractive than investment here in the U.S.

The PSI hearing on Apple revealed the tricks used by the company to make its profits appear to be generated abroad so that it can take advantage of the rule allowing U.S. corporations to “defer” paying U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. As CTJ has explained before, a territorial system would expand deferral into an exemption for offshore profits, which would increase the incentives to engage in these practices.