this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Coca-Cola Taxes (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by ModerateImprovement to c/whitepeopletwitter
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[–] [email protected] 116 points 4 months ago (14 children)

Coca-Cola is an evil company, so I'm not surprised. All they had to do was make cola, and be cool. Instead they operated like a criminal cartel, murdered labor activists in third world countries, exploited workers, bribed politicians, and evaded taxes. They should crumble under the weight of their crimes. If the government bails them out then we should all protest heavily.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 4 months ago (3 children)

With a wink and a nudge, transactions are often structured to shift profits from high-tax countries to low-tax countries to cut their tax bills. The most popular target for transfer pricing abuse is intangible property, including licenses for manufacturing, distribution, sale, marketing, and promotion of products in overseas markets. Since intangible property doesn't really have a physical home—unlike, say, real estate—it's easy to transfer it to countries that offer certain benefits, including more favorable tax treatment. (That’s what’s in dispute in the Coca-Cola case.)

Ugh

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

Always preferred Pepsi anyway.

looks at Pepsi's record

Ah shit

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

Fun fact, these back taxes are higher than the share value of the entire company (~$11bn market cap).

Edit: I was misled by this site. The cap is much larger, and my fact was not fun.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago

Good. I hope it hurts.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (2 children)

But it's only back taxes on profits we know about

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 4 months ago (5 children)

The fact that there are so many legal loopholes to use to save from paying taxes, the fact they go this far to avoid taxes is disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago (1 children)

When you're a billion dollar company, It's cheaper to bribe politicians than it is to pay taxes.

There's a supreme Court judge right now who was giving companies favorable laws for like a pack of twizzlers.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

it is just an inevitable consequence of money and lobby based politics. Whoever contributed to turn US elections into something like a pro wrestling match event is to blame

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Did you know it doesn’t even have cocaine in it anymore? What a ripoff!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Coca Cola ensured that international drug laws grant them an exception to use real coca leaves (with the cocaine extracted from them first). Oddly enough, they could still make their cola taste the same without the leaves. The reason they still use them is because they likely wouldn't be allowed to call it "coca" cola if it had no coca leaves. The name was so recognizable that they asked for an exception to drug laws rather than change the name of their drink.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 4 months ago

Anyone who tells me "there's not enough money to go around" in the future is getting punched. I don't care if I catch an assault charge. That propaganda was bullshit the first time I heard it and it's always been propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm so sick of companies taking every opportunity to be egregiously shitty in the name of profit.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (25 children)

These are the incentives of the economic system. Are you up for radical change? We can't rely on companies choosing to be moral and nice.

We need workers to own the economy.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Trust me... the astronomical amounts that they have found is nothing compared to what they didn't find...

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago

Now do Cargill, Tyson, etc al.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A bit off topic, but US Coke tastes like shit

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I'm pretty sure it's because the use of absurd amounts of high fructose corn syrup. There's 39g (can't confirm, I got it from Google) of sugar in a 12oz (340ml) can. US soda is pretty much just carbonated high fructose corn syrup water with a bit of flavoring. There's probably other significant differences too since the US has barely the minimum food safety laws.

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[–] diemartin 16 points 4 months ago

Yeah. Colombian is better.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Willing to bet the 16 bn is not really a year and a half of profits lol

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago

I bet they won’t pay shit and we’ll just stop talking about it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago

You're not going to believe this, but it turns out that no one knew this was happening - they're all completely innocent! As long as they promise not to do anything immoral ever again, they're fine. /s

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

So, now that the US has 16 billion more dollars than they planned for, surely they can cancel all student loan debt and build affordable housing, right? They won't just throw it at military contractors and directly redistribute it back to the wealthy, right???

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

So you're kinda right and kinda not.

Roughly what actually happens in cases of massive back-taxes likes this is that the movement of funds is tracked back through to the municipalities where they initially failed to pay. From there the actual unpaid amounts are calculated for each level, then priority weighting is assigned (if the total sum was reduced to less than the delinquent payment), then the repayment schedule is calculated for each municipality, and finally the IRS takes the cost of remediation investigation from the top (probably about 1.5 mil for this one) and begins repayment.

That 'repayment schedule' means that the funds not immediately disbursed can be loaned out (most often to other government agencies) (there's a term for the specific kind of loan this is, it's very short term but I am totally blanking on the name). Funds are usually given out at the next funding cycle unless there's a claim made for immediate funding, and from there it's just folded into the budget and assigned however that municipality / organization handles budget allocation.

TL;DR: Biden admin can't have the funds directly except in emergencies, that would be constitutional overstep. It just goes back to the government at the next budget assignment. Which you can draw your own conclusions about where Congress will put that additional money.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

don't be silly

it'll get appealed and fought over and over until it's down to 600 million

they'll pay back 300 and we wont hear anything else about it for years until someone mentions Clarence Thomas getting a new 300 million dollar golden calf statue around the same time

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Good.

How many people have diabetes because of their Coca-Cola addiction? How many people are overweight and hate their bodies because of all of the non-nutritious sugars they have drank?

And they have the audacity to not only charge several dollars a pop for their sodas, but to also bottle water in the exact same plant and charge the exact same price for the water they have bottled that they do for their sodas.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I am sure they totally haven't made any money off the taxes they didn't pay. I'd love to steal a million dollars and only get fined a million dollars 10 years later!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (8 children)

They’ll just…raise prices to offset the judgment.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 months ago (14 children)

And lots of people will stop drinking it because of that, and they will be healthier thanks to it.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

I love the response, "But this could mean we'd have to pay more!"

... and?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

It would be nice to have nice things associated with American infrastructure, again.

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