Wrong.

Companies pay tax depending on certain market characteristics. Additionally, people paying taxes rebalances their consumption behaviour and can realign incentives across the marketplace.

I cannot move myself to a low tax jurisdiction very easily, but a large corporation or wealthy individual can - if we had international agreements in place, the corporation would be forced to pay a tax and would be unable to avoid it - just like me.

With regards to you thinking I am wrong, this is a matter of simple accounting: costs go up (enforced tax in this case) therefore prices MUST/WILL go up.

Customers will pay the tax bill.

Imagine a shareholders meeting: "the government have just enforced an additional 20% tax onto us which is going to cost X Billion a year. We're going to eat that cost. Is that ok?"

There's not a chance that the shareholders will accept that... prices WILL increase to cover it.

Sure, they will likely squeeze suppliers and look for savings elsewhere but that will only cover some of it as I would imagine suppliers are squeezed hard as it is.

So, yes, the government will likely get more tax in the short term but it won't be paid by the corporations.

Apple already have the largest margins in the industry. They are sitting on a 245 billion dollar cash pile. They have so much cash they literally don't know what to do with it. Meanwhile, infrastructure and public services in both our countries are failing. But I guess voters, like you, "are sick of hearing about it", which explains a lot.

I'm from the UK as it happens but I am sick of hearing about it, yes!

It's not Apple's fault that your infrastructure is failing.

So the US government spending nearly $1 Trillion annually on the military is worth every penny I assume. Imagine your military budget was halved. What could you do with an extra $500 Billion a year?

The fact that the US government spends nearly $700 Billion annually on Medicare and your health system is utterly broken doesn't bother you.

Or that your government bailed out the banks to the tune of around $16 TRILLION doesn't piss you off.

Or that your debt pile is so big your grandchildren are already in debt before they are born!

But Apple and it's profits does?

I am not American, but if I was, much of the above would also upset me. But you are invoking a straw man, my point was that Apple should pay more tax (especially to Europe), not solve all the worlds problems. I get that you don't care.

Apologies for assuming you were from the US but I hear this from Americans quite a lot about their tech giants.

I wasn't trying to create a strawman but I stand by my argument as counter to yours.

Tax isn't a moral issue. It's a financial one.

Also, it's not that I don't care but I stand by my assessment: If you increase Apple's costs, the consumers will pay it. You are basically taxing the consumers.

It makes no sense to have corporation tax.

Edit: changed my argument a bit.

It depends on the company, and their market position. If you tax an interchangeable commodity with thin profit margins, the producers of that commodity will raise prices in order to stay in business.

If a company makes a high-margin product with little competition (i.e. most tech companies), they're probably already charging whatever price they think is optimal to maximize their revenue. If taxes go up, they can afford to keep prices steady. If they can raise prices, there's no particular reason why they wouldn't have already done so before these new taxes.

A lot of companies are somewhere in the middle -- if taxes go up, they might eat part of the cost, but also raise prices a little bit.

Random anecdote: I was in Harbor Freight the other day, and someone asked an employee about the impact of Trump's tariffs on their business. The employee said yeah, it's sort of a problem but their profit margin is high enough that they can just eat the cost and keep prices mostly the same. Maybe the employee is just repeating some overly-optimistic view of the situation that the leadership wants to project, but if it's true it's an interesting reminder that even businesses that appear be barely breaking even might actually be generating a very comfortable profit. (Harbor Freight is also privately owned, so they don't have to conform to shareholder expectations of financial performance.)