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A few weeks ago, the governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, signed into law a tax “incentive package” that his administration had negotiated with Tesla, the electric car company. Tesla is planning to build a giant factory to manufacture the batteries that power its cars, and Nevada was one of five states that were competing fiercely to land the plant.
几个星期前，内华达州政府与电动汽车公司特斯拉(Tesla)谈成的“一揽子税收激励方案”，经州长布赖恩·桑多瓦尔(Brian Sandoval)签署生效。特斯拉正准备建造一家为其电动车产品生产电池的巨型工厂。包括内华达在内，共有五个州为了让工厂在本地落户而展开了激烈的竞争。
It ultimately offered a staggering $1.25 billion package of tax breaks that includes sales tax abatements for the next two decades, 10 years of property tax abatements and nearly $200 million in transferable tax credits that Tesla could sell to Nevada companies that wanted to lower their own tax bills. Although Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, insisted that at least one of the other states had offered an even richer tax package, it is clear that the tax breaks Nevada came up with played an important role in landing the Tesla factory.
最终，内达华州提供了一项总额高达12.5亿美元（约合76.7亿元人民币）的税收优惠计划，其中包括未来20年的销售税减免、10年的不动产税减免，以及将近2亿美元的可转让税收抵免额——特拉斯可以将其倒卖给想要少缴税款的州内公司。显然，内达华州所提供的税收优惠，是它拿下特斯拉电池生产厂的重要助力，尽管公司的首席执行官埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)坚称，其他参与竞争的州中，至少有一个承诺过更为慷慨的税收优惠政策。
In reading this week about Apple’s tax dealings in Ireland, I found myself reflecting on the tax deals that American states cut all the time with companies they are trying to lure. It’s not all that different. In a sense, what Ireland has been doing is the global equivalent of what the states do to attract business. And that is especially true in the case of Apple.
本周，看着与苹果公司(Apple)在爱尔兰的税务安排有关的报道，我不由得想起了美国各州和它们极力延揽的企业之间频频达成的税收协议。两者并没有多大差别。在某种意义上，爱尔兰和美国各州为了招商而做着同样的事情，只不过爱尔兰上升到了国际层面。在苹果的事情上，尤其如此。
Ireland has long had one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe; it’s currently 12.5 percent. That low rate, the Irish believe, helped attract industry and create the country’s boom in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
长期以来，爱尔兰的企业税税率在欧洲国家中位居下游——目前为12.5%。爱尔兰认为，在金融危机爆发前的那些年，这种低税率在吸引外资企业、推动本国经济繁荣方面功不可没。
But it did a lot more than simply offer a low corporate tax rate. It set itself up as a kind of European tax haven, so that companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others could, in effect, buy an Irish address to which they could transfer a great deal of their intellectual property and route profits accrued elsewhere through the Irish subsidiary. This is called transfer pricing. Companies could also take advantage of other loopholes in the Irish tax code to get their tax bill considerably lower than 12.5 percent.
然而，爱尔兰绝非只是提供低税率而已。它把自己打造成了欧洲的避税天堂，允许谷歌(Google)、Facebook和微软(Microsoft)等公司实际上仅需买下一个爱尔兰的地址，就能通过该国的子公司把应计入其他地方的大量知识产权和常规收益转移过来。这一招被称为“转移定价”。企业还可以钻爱尔兰税法的其他一些空子，让自己所承担的实际税负远低于12.5%。
As The New York Times reported in a groundbreaking article two years ago — and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations confirmed last year — Apple takes advantage of every tax break Ireland offers. But according to the European Union’s competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, in a letter released this week, the company went a step further in its dealings with the Irish tax authorities.
就像《纽约时报》在两年前发表的一篇突破性文章中报道的那样，苹果公司充分利用了爱尔兰提供的每一项税收优惠。参议院常设调查小组委员会(Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations)去年也对此予以了确认。不过，欧盟负责竞争事务的委员华金·阿尔穆尼亚(Joaquín Almunia)在本周公布的信件中指出，在与爱尔兰税务部门进行纳税安排时，苹果公司做得更进一步。
In 1991, Apple essentially negotiated how much tax the company would pay. It did so after it had explicitly “mentioned by way of background information that Apple was now the largest employer in the Cork area with 1,000 direct employees and 500 persons engaged on a sub-contract basis,” again according to Almunia’s letter. Apple also acknowledged that it had “no scientific basis” for the amount of tax it was willing to pay. The deal was then “reverse engineered” so that Apple’s profits would wind up in the range that would yield the suggested taxes. (Apple now has 4,000 people working in its Cork manufacturing plant, the only Apple-owned factory in Europe; its tax deal with Ireland was reworked in 2007.)
1991年，苹果实质上通过谈判确定了公司应该缴纳的税额。阿尔穆尼亚在信中表示，公司在“背景信息中明确提到，苹果目前是科克地区最大的雇主，拥有1000名直属雇员，以及500名签署分包合同的人员”。此后，双方进行了谈判。苹果公司也承认，对于愿意缴纳的税额，他们并“没有科学依据”。这项协议后来被“反推”，如此一来，苹果最终的利润会刚好落在需要缴纳相应税率的区间。（苹果位于科克的制造工厂目前拥有4000名员工，是它在欧洲唯一的归自身所有的工厂；苹果与爱尔兰在2007年重新修订了税务协议。）
With the recent outcry over corporate tax loopholes, the E.U. decided to take a closer look at some of its members’ tax dealings that had been flagged in the media. In addition to Apple and Ireland, it is looking at Fiat in Luxembourg and Starbucks in the Netherlands. And while the Apple case is far from over — indeed, both Apple and Ireland insist they did nothing wrong — Almunia, at least, has concluded that Apple’s tax deal with Ireland amounts to “state aid.” Under European Commission rules, countries are not allowed to subsidize companies in ways that give them advantages over others in the country.
由于企业的税收漏洞最近引起了轩然大波，欧盟决定对媒体揭露的某些欧盟成员国的税收安排进行仔细审查。除了苹果与爱尔兰的做法，欧盟还在调查菲亚特(Fiat)在卢森堡，以及星巴克(Starbucks)在荷兰的税务安排。虽然苹果的案件还远远没有结束——实际上苹果和爱尔兰坚称它们不存在违法行为——但至少阿尔穆尼亚已经断定，苹果与爱尔兰的税务协议相当于“国家补贴”。欧盟委员会的规定禁止各个国家以提供优惠条件的方式对企业进行补贴，这样会使一些公司比另一些公司更有优势。
Here then is one difference between what transpires in the U.S. and what transpires in Europe: The E.U. has rules intended to prevent nations from giving unjustified tax breaks to companies. “In Europe there is now a mechanism to prevent the most harmful abuses” of the tax code, said Matthew Gardner, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. It has taken a while — and required an outraged public to spur it on — but the E.U. finally seems intent on curbing excesses like Apple’s tax deal in Ireland.
美国的情况与欧洲的情况存在一个差异：欧盟制定了相关规定，以防止国家给予公司不合理的税收优惠。税收与经济政策研究所(Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)执行理事马修·加德纳(Matthew Gardner)说，“欧洲现在存在一种机制，来防止危害性最强的规避税法的行为。”走到这一步花了一些时间，也需要愤怒的公众进一步推动，但欧盟最终似乎下定了决心，要遏制一些过分的行为，比如苹果与爱尔兰达成的税务协议。
In truth, most tax subsidies don’t make much sense — not for countries and certainly not for states. “There is a lot of work that shows that tax subsidies vastly overpay for the jobs they create,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California and the author of the recent book “We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money.”
实际上，大多数税收补贴对于国家，特别是对于各州来说，并没有多大意义。南加州大学(University of Southern California)法学教授爱德华·克莱恩巴德(Edward Kleinbard)说，“有很多研究显示，税收补贴的金额，远远超过了公司所创造就业岗位的价值。”克莱恩巴德最近出版了《我们可以做得更好：纳税人的钱政府应该怎么花》(We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money)。
It’s a good thing that the E.U. is trying to curb unjustified tax breaks. Maybe it’s time to do the same here.
欧盟正在设法遏制不合理的税收优惠，这是好事。或许美国现在也应该这么做。
