Designed and assembled for Congress by Apple in California
Designed and assembled for Congress by Apple in California
Why surf-pop, iOS7 and the new Mac Pro sound less like design and technology and more like tax performance advisory
Why surf-pop, iOS7 and the new Mac Pro sound less like design and technology and more like tax performance advisory
A lot of people are fussing about Apple’s latest announcement of the iOS7 redesign. iOS7 will, in all likelihood be standard Apple fare. Beautifully designed, immaculately crafted, incredibly successful and rightly earn the company a lot of money.
What I personally found much more interesting than iOS7 during the keynote presentation at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference was the announcement of a Mac Pro, and not necessarily from a technical perspective.
Instead, I thought it was quite amusing to see Apple executives flout the Mac Pro as an example of American innovation, designed by Apple in California and assembled in Texas along with a number of other manufacturing facilities throughout the US.
Designers across the internet are noticing the revitalised ‘surf-pop’ aesthetic that Apple is embracing as a recognition of the artistic values that California embodies. Whether it’s naming a new desktop operating system after a surf spot in NoCal, Mavericks, or running emotional adverts with hipsters using iPhones in an unmistakeably San Franciscan setting, Apple is embracing its environment quite enthusiastically and it’s taking great pains to non-chalantly remind the world of the fact.
Or, rather specifically, remind the US Congress of Apple’s contributions to the American economy despite decades of abusing legal loopholes to avoid corporate tax.
Already Apple dodges a major part of US corporate tax by rerouting income through trademark licenses held by shell corporations overseas and by accounting for sales in Byzantine and bafflingly legal ways. None of this constitutes wrongdoing but it’s a testament to Apple’s capacity to innovate that it can not just write the book on personal computers and mobile phones but also on international transfers and taxation. That it engages in this behaviour is economically rational for any corporation - that it also feels unfair to many people is because the same advantages are unavailable to the wider public and because these tax-efficiencies deprive states of much needed funding for public and social services like education and health-care.
Apple is part of an umbrella of corporations that generate a lot of sales overseas to the US and have yet to repatriate that income. Doing so would effectively double-tax the money coming back in - that’s why Tim Cook, proposes the idea of single-digit tax rates during a ‘holiday’ to bring in a collective fortune in amassed cash holdings into the US.
Tim Cook painstakingly reminded Congress that Apple is a job creator in the US. “Designed in California” has long been a tag-line on Apple products but with an idiosyncratic opportunity to reform the American tax-code to Apple’s benefit, “Designed in California” takes on a whole new meaning.
“Designed in California” stands for good design, surfing, sunshine and an Apple lifestyle. But if you mess with Apple’s tax structure, it also means it could just as well have been designed anywhere else.