Apple's claiming their headquarters is worth only $200

[peanuts104]

22 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Government thinks it's worth 1 billion+

 

A valuation of 500 million from apple would have been haggling
A valuation of 100 million would have been misrepresenting the truth/ speaking falsehoods aka lying

A valuation of 1 million would have been insulting but at least they tried to be subtle
A valuation of $1 would have been an actual place holder

A valuation of $200 is what they somehow came up with

 

I want what you're smoking or is apple literally paying shills these days?

If you're trying to haggle for the lowest price and you don't know what the floor is, why would you set it?  It makes no sense to say $500 mil if you could literally get $200 dollars for it.  It's obviously absurd, but it gives nothing away as to what you actually think it's worth, putting the ball firmly in your opponent's court.  If you think that's dishonest, fine.  I agree that it is.  But as it stands, it appears this is a common practice among at least tech companies in the area, if not most major businesses in California that have significant holdings in real estate.  If you want to demonize the practice, then so be it.  But this isn't about Apple in particular.  As has been shown, multiple tech companies appeal their taxes and I would reckon most companies that own significant real estate holdings in California do, because it saves them money, and companies like money.  I cannot understand why you are being so obtuse.  If Santa Clara County, the final authority on the matter, comes out and says they accept that Apple's campus is worth $200, I will literally rip my 7700k out of my system and smash it with a hammer.

[kilgore_T]

[Guest]

53 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Value is a matter of perspective and metric. I think iphones are not worth the price tag they carry while dr mac thinks they are. Is one of us lying? Of course not,  Apple are just lowballing the value to start negotiations for an agreed value. 

I’m so sick of this. There are other Apple fanboys thank you. They are also very much worth the price. 2 Years free support and a great mobile OS, not to mention in-house design from the ground up has a cost.

[NMS]

So let's say that I were to destroy the building. Would I have to pay $200 in damages +laweyers and other legal fees?

I still wouldn't do it though as the plane ticket to California would be at least five times the price.

[peanuts104]

Just now, NMS said:

So let's say that I were to destroy the building. Would I have to pay $200 in damages +laweyers and other legal fees?

I still wouldn't do it though as the plane ticket to California would be at least five times the price.

Literally no insurer would insure it at that value.  Also, a good insurer wouldn't rely on the tax assessment for property value.

[suicidalfranco]

i wish everyone would just stop paying all forms off taxes like this companies do. why should we pay when they don't stand to our same obligations?

I say let's all take a page from their books and use their tactics to avoid taxes, it's not illegal anyway.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Swatson said:

Government thinks it's worth 1 billion+

 

A valuation of 500 million from apple would have been haggling
A valuation of 100 million would have been misrepresenting the truth/ speaking falsehoods aka lying

A valuation of 1 million would have been insulting but at least they tried to be subtle
A valuation of $1 would have been an actual place holder

A valuation of $200 is what they somehow came up with

 

I want what you're smoking or is apple literally paying shills these days?

Only if you don't understand the bureaucratic process.   I personally hate apple and google, however I can't fault them for playing the game by the governments rules.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, suicidalfranco said:

i wish everyone would just stop paying all forms off taxes like this companies do. why should we pay when they don't stand to our same obligations?

I say let's all take a page from their books and use their tactics to avoid taxes, it's not illegal anyway.

It's one of those capitalist things. Our taxes are paying for what they're getting away with. 

[Drak3]

24 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

It's one of those capitalist things

It has nothing to do with capitalism.

[Doobeedoo]

What a company. #1 example of overrated. 

[Syntaxvgm]

This is either fraud or transparent stalling to hold up their taxes in legal proceedings. Either way, there's a difference between paying the least amount of taxes you are legally liable to, which every company has the 'responsibility' to do, and whatever the fuck this practice is. Kinda really scummy. 

[dizmo]

Exactly why I hate Apple as a company.

[Jtalk4456]

28 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

transparent stalling to hold up their taxes in legal proceedings

This seems to be the case as their 489 open cases range back to 2004

[Car712]

Did they think they would get away with this? I mean really, are they that stupid? I would have thought this story was a joke!

[Jtalk4456]

14 hours ago, peanuts104 said:

Ahem.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Want-a-lower-tax-bill-So-do-Apple-and-Genentech-13148121.php?utm_campaign=thirdparty&utm_source=article&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Ftechnology%2Fbusinessinsider%2Farticle%2FApple-is-reportedly-arguing-that-buildings-at-its-13154475.php

 

"In the Bay Area, Genentech and Apple are particularly aggressive in opposing tax assessors..."

 

"Genentech, the biotech giant best known for making blockbuster cancer drugs, has been embroiled in an 18-year battle with San Mateo County over the value of hundreds of pieces of equipment and machinery and dozens of parcels of land in its sprawling South San Francisco headquarters. "

First off, just because others are doing it doesn't make it right. Taken from your article:

Quote

 

“I don’t want to imply someone doesn’t have a right to contest their taxes if they believe the assessor has made an error. But that’s not what Genentech is doing,” said Deputy County Counsel Rebecca Archer. “They’re just filing and seeing what sticks, like throwing spaghetti at the wall. It’s working the system to the max in a way that’s not productive for taxpayers, for the companies (or) for the assessor.”

The practice, they say, forces local governments to hold millions of dollars in limbo that would otherwise go to taxpayer-funded programs like schools, roads and special districts, in case they have to issue refunds to the companies.

 

There is nothing illegal or unethical about appealing assessments. Companies are entitled to contest property assessments they believe are done improperly or inaccurately. But the tactics taken by Genentech, Apple and other large corporations, county assessors say, border on abusing the system.

Second it doesn't give a specific example of a google case undervaluing to that level, and I agree with swatson that taking averages is a bad way to look at that. I'd need some actual case details to believe fully that google is doing the same. Having said that, I have no doubt many of these companies are using this tactic, including google.

A bit of rant ahead:

The difference is where you assume i'm defending google. I have no intention of defending google if they are doing this, nor any company. The reason you assume i'm all against apple is because the people who are against apple are against it not for one single reason, but for many. Other companies do one thing, maybe two things wrong that really hit the news. Every time we turn around though, apple is in a different fight. it was headphone jacks, it was bricking phones repaired by 3rd parties after updates, it was disabling touchid after 3rd party repairs, it's notches, it's refusing to fix linus's pro, it's doing terrible repair jobs on snazzys pro with the vesa mount, it's the macbook keyboard, denying there's anything wrong with the keyboard, bad engineering practices, throttling phones because the battery is crap, then CHARGING to replace the battery, never admitting any wrong anywhere, not allowing authorized service providers to repair and rather force them to replace, but then not providing a supply of parts, the list goes on and on. and the worst part is, when we get upset at these stories so constantly, there's a barrage of comments from apple lovers defending everything. And I'm not talking just arguing price vs value. Even on this post, where apple is trying to intentionally lowball their taxes to a ridiculous degree, there's people like you saying either it's just business, it's smart, it's legal, or everyone's doing it. And especially with regards to the first company to hit the trillion dollar market cap, I expect to see better from the companies unofficially running our world. If the highest value company has to resort to flat out lying and trying to short the government of the taxes that help it's customers, then there's a problem. They can afford to be the richest, but they can't manage to pay their taxes? Families across the US exist well within the poverty and somehow manage to pay their taxes, but the company that can afford a billion dollar home, and not their only home mind you, can't scrape enough together to do the right thing? I expect more from these companies. And if google does the same thing and there's a big story, people will be pissed! you won't see the same degree of people defending them or samsung or lg from bad press the way apple is shielded. Take samsung as a good example. with the note 7, they were ripped into. There wasn't a crowd of people standing around samsung saying that it's alright because having a defect is legal. Vast crowds weren't praising and cheering them as they quickly rolled out replacements at no charge, and then did a final recall quickly when the replacements had a different defect. They developed a whole new testing/inspection procedure for their batteries and took an estimated 9 billion dollar loss from the fiasco. They lost market share. But if apple messes up, "you're using it wrong" and they never admit there's a problem with antennae placement, fans don't get angry at them, and the market share doesn't disappear. It's frustrating to me and many others that Apple is claimed to be of superior quality as to justify their pricing, but their customers never seem to hold them accountable to anywhere near the standard to which the same fans and the rest of us hold every other company we encounter accountable. Personally I don't like the OS, but that's just preference, and I have little problem with their physical products, the problem I have is their business practices. And this article is just another example of the reason I can never use their products.

[YedZed]

10 hours ago, Belgarathian said:

 $225 NZD. 
 

 

Related to Canadian Rubles or more valuable?

[AlTech]

I'll take 3 of thes please

 

/joke

[peanuts104]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

First off, just because others are doing it doesn't make it right. Taken from your article:

There is nothing illegal or unethical about appealing assessments. Companies are entitled to contest property assessments they believe are done improperly or inaccurately. But the tactics taken by Genentech, Apple and other large corporations, county assessors say, border on abusing the system.

Second it doesn't give a specific example of a google case undervaluing to that level, and I agree with swatson that taking averages is a bad way to look at that. I'd need some actual case details to believe fully that google is doing the same. Having said that, I have no doubt many of these companies are using this tactic, including google.

A bit of rant ahead:

The difference is where you assume i'm defending google. I have no intention of defending google if they are doing this, nor any company. The reason you assume i'm all against apple is because the people who are against apple are against it not for one single reason, but for many. Other companies do one thing, maybe two things wrong that really hit the news. Every time we turn around though, apple is in a different fight. it was headphone jacks, it was bricking phones repaired by 3rd parties after updates, it was disabling touchid after 3rd party repairs, it's notches, it's refusing to fix linus's pro, it's doing terrible repair jobs on snazzys pro with the vesa mount, it's the macbook keyboard, denying there's anything wrong with the keyboard, bad engineering practices, throttling phones because the battery is crap, then CHARGING to replace the battery, never admitting any wrong anywhere, not allowing authorized service providers to repair and rather force them to replace, but then not providing a supply of parts, the list goes on and on. and the worst part is, when we get upset at these stories so constantly, there's a barrage of comments from apple lovers defending everything. And I'm not talking just arguing price vs value. Even on this post, where apple is trying to intentionally lowball their taxes to a ridiculous degree, there's people like you saying either it's just business, it's smart, it's legal, or everyone's doing it. And especially with regards to the first company to hit the trillion dollar market cap, I expect to see better from the companies unofficially running our world. If the highest value company has to resort to flat out lying and trying to short the government of the taxes that help it's customers, then there's a problem. They can afford to be the richest, but they can't manage to pay their taxes? Families across the US exist well within the poverty and somehow manage to pay their taxes, but the company that can afford a billion dollar home, and not their only home mind you, can't scrape enough together to do the right thing? I expect more from these companies. And if google does the same thing and there's a big story, people will be pissed! you won't see the same degree of people defending them or samsung or lg from bad press the way apple is shielded. Take samsung as a good example. with the note 7, they were ripped into. There wasn't a crowd of people standing around samsung saying that it's alright because having a defect is legal. Vast crowds weren't praising and cheering them as they quickly rolled out replacements at no charge, and then did a final recall quickly when the replacements had a different defect. They developed a whole new testing/inspection procedure for their batteries and took an estimated 9 billion dollar loss from the fiasco. They lost market share. But if apple messes up, "you're using it wrong" and they never admit there's a problem with antennae placement, fans don't get angry at them, and the market share doesn't disappear. It's frustrating to me and many others that Apple is claimed to be of superior quality as to justify their pricing, but their customers never seem to hold them accountable to anywhere near the standard to which the same fans and the rest of us hold every other company we encounter accountable. Personally I don't like the OS, but that's just preference, and I have little problem with their physical products, the problem I have is their business practices. And this article is just another example of the reason I can never use their products.

I agree with almost all of your rant. This practice in general stretches the limits of the system and I would agree that it is abusing the system.  My only point is that other companies are doing this too and the title of the topic suggests that it's only Apple that is undervaluing their properties when protesting their assessments, which is super clickbaity and a misrepresentation of the situation as a whole.  If Google is averaging approximately $20 million in value discrepancy per property you're disputing, it's safe to say they are severely undervaluing their properties.  The only way to know for sure what other companies, like Google, lowballed would be an open records request and I don't care enough to do that.  And I'm not saying you like Google or any other company that does it either, I'm just using them because they are a good example of another tech giant that is doing this.  I despise Apple's anti-consumer practices and the Apple fanboys that think their company can do no wrong, but this is is a different situation than that.

 

And frankly, I think some of the blame must rest with the state of California on this.  This, according to the article, has been going on for decades, yet there has been no effort, as far as I can tell, to shorten the appeal process.  Where I work, properties are reassessed every year.  If you appeal your assessment, usually it's just a few day process.  If you want to drag it out longer, maybe a few months, but at the end of the day the countymakes sure they collect their taxes that year.  If companies can still be appealing stuff going all the way back to 2004, something with the appeals system is broken and should be fixed (but it won't be because of lobbying from all of the tech giants in California).

[ARikozuM]

1 hour ago, YedZed said:

Related to Canadian Rubles or more valuable?

Hylian Rupees are more valuable than Canadian pesetas. 

[AlTech]

22 hours ago, ScratchCat said:

I raise you ONE HUNDRED TRILLION _Zimbwabe DOLLARS!

 

Apple is generally smart but how the actual **** do they expect to convince a court that the building is worth $200? Even if the land was previously used as a nuclear test site the valuation would be higher.

I'll raise you 999 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars

 

lmao

Spoiler

 

[Tcrumpen]

As with all Apple products the sum of it's parts is worth less than what they are selling it for but they add a huge markup and then label it as revolutionary and game breaking

[Jtalk4456]

18 minutes ago, peanuts104 said:

I agree with almost all of your rant. This practice in general stretches the limits of the system and I would agree that it is abusing the system.  My only point is that other companies are doing this too and the title of the topic suggests that it's only Apple that is undervaluing their properties when protesting their assessments, which is super clickbaity and a misrepresentation of the situation as a whole.  If Google is averaging approximately $20 million in value discrepancy per property you're disputing, it's safe to say they are severely undervaluing their properties.  The only way to know for sure what other companies, like Google, lowballed would be an open records request and I don't care enough to do that.  And I'm not saying you like Google or any other company that does it either, I'm just using them because they are a good example of another tech giant that is doing this.  I despise Apple's anti-consumer practices and the Apple fanboys that think their company can do no wrong, but this is is a different situation than that.

I disagree that the topic suggested only apple was doing this. The topic pointed out apple as doing it in such a ridiculous manner. 200 for a world headquarters catches the news. I never mentioned that this was exclusive. Apple is just the one caught recently and the case in question is just plain silly how much they are devaluing the building. The ability to make these arguments is vital to freedom, but the fact that apple is trying so hard to abuse and exploit it for every penny, especially again given they just broke the record for market cap and aren't hurting for money in the least makes this story especially offensive. The amount of taxes being refused the city to use for improvements that would help everyone is ridiculous. all companies take advantage of tax loopholes, but apple straight up takes a jack hammer and makes the hole as big as possible. As for your google argument, that's not a safe assumption at all. Until we see individual details of the cases and the buildings, that's just a bad assumption. Averages don't work for a complicated system like this. Apple we have numbers on, so yes i'm going to ridicule those numbers, they deserve ridiculing. If you provide similar examples for google with actual numbers, I'll ridicule them as needed, but until then, just averaging numbers is not an effective look at a system this large. you say google is averaging 20mil lower than assessment per building, but apple is marking down their headquarters by $999,999,800 just on this one building. 20mil or 999 mil? one is slightly more eggregious than the others. Also with a billion dollar headquarter building, it is possible for two people to have a different judgement on values. 20 mil into 1 billion is a difference in opinion of 2%, where apples example is a 99.99998% difference in opinion.... So again without specific numbers and examples, talking about google and pretending that this article is singling apple out or misrepresenting anything is just not true. Nothing was misrepresented here, I told you what apple did, and there's public record of them doing it. Plain and simple. If record comes out for google, the same can be done with those specifics as needed

Quote

And frankly, I think some of the blame must rest with the state of California on this.  This, according to the article, has been going on for decades, yet there has been no effort, as far as I can tell, to shorten the appeal process.  Where I work, properties are reassessed every year.  If you appeal your assessment, usually it's just a few day process.  If you want to drag it out longer, maybe a few months, but at the end of the day the countymakes sure they collect their taxes that year.  If companies can still be appealing stuff going all the way back to 2004, something with the appeals system is broken and should be fixed (but it won't be because of lobbying from all of the tech giants in California).

I don't know the political climate there, but i doubt this is specific to california. i bet small businesses get a normal appeals process. The difference being a company like apple has money for lots of lawyers and can get it held up in court. lots of cities will be lenient towards certain things to get headquarters because of the jobs and assumed tax revenue. But i don't live there so i may be flat out wrong there

[psydox]

On 8/15/2018 at 3:53 PM, YedZed said:

Fuck it, I'm going all in. 400 dollars for the entirety of the trillion dollar company's headquarters!

@YedZed I would like to put forward a mystery bag which may or may not have 10,000 USD in it!

[Brooksie359]

10 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

I’m so sick of this. There are other Apple fanboys thank you. They are also very much worth the price. 2 Years free support and a great mobile OS, not to mention in-house design from the ground up has a cost.

Their phones I would say are well designed and are priced high but so is the competition so it's pretty fair. Their computers on the other hand are not worth the price tag. 

[MattMatt]

I'm sick of this as well but it's not just Apple, all companies find loopholes to save money. There's only one solution to this and that's to change the law.

 

We need to get rid of those corrupt individuals in power taking bribes from large companies and put those who are in touch with the modern world in charge. Get rid of the people like those in the Mark Zuckerberg hearing who have no clue about modern technology and the rapid progress of civilisation.