14 DAY TRIAL // Apple, the superstar resident of Cupertino, has been dragged into a new dispute this time right with the mayor of the city, who thinks that the company isn’t giving back to the community as much as it should.
In an interview with The Guardian, Cupertino Mayor Barry Chang talks about how Apple has turned to unfair practices to avoid paying taxes and helping the city deal with overcrowded traffic that the company itself has contributed to.
Chang went as far as blasting Apple for turning to offshore accounts to dodge taxes, a practice that most tech giants have used, but which is completely legal as far as the US system is concerned.
“They’re making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won’t,” Chang said. “They abuse us. Apple is not wiling to pay a dime.”
“I’m not going to back down. Raising taxes is not popular, but I’m not afraid. We are the center of technology, and our public transit system is old and embarrassing. And the politicians have no backbone. They get scared.”
Apple’s answer
As it happens every time when tech giants are accused of tax evasion, Apple responded by pointing to the millions of dollars it pays in taxes every year. The company claimed that it pays tens of millions of dollars in additional sales and property taxes to the city of Cupertino, according to The Verge, and the completion of its new Spaceship campus will generate billions of dollars for local businesses.
But according to Chang’s numbers, Apple could do more for the local community. According to his figures posted by The Guardian, Apple has no less than $181 billion in overseas accounts and it would otherwise have to pay a total of $59.2 billion if it didn’t turn to tax havens.
Backing down
In an updated statement this morning, the Cupertino Mayor provides some corrections for the original The Guardian interview, explaining that the story contained “several factual errors.”
He claims he never accused Apple of anything besides contributing to traffic problems and only wanted the company to actually help authorities implement the proposed solutions.
“I was shocked and dismayed to see a recent article quoting me with words I never used and describing situations that never happened. I feel very strongly about combating traffic. Other situations reported in the article absolutely have no bearing on anything that I may have said or anything that has happened in this community,” he said.