Holiday Incentive Card Purchase Order Form: Fill & Download for Free

HOW DOES BITCOIN GETS IT VALUESWith these attributes, all that is required for a form of money to hold value is trust and adoption. In the case of Bitcoin, this can be measured by its growing base of users, merchants, and startups. As with all currency, bitcoin's value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment.Bitcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. Bitcoin has the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies). In short, Bitcoin is backed by mathematics.What determines bitcoin’s price?The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. When demand for bitcoins increases, the price increases, and when demand falls, the price falls. There is only a limited number of bitcoins in circulation and new bitcoins are created at a predictable and decreasing rate, which means that demand must follow this level of inflation to keep the price stable. Because Bitcoin is still a relatively small market compared to what it could be, it doesn't take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down, and thus the price of a bitcoin is still very volatile.EconomyHow are bitcoins created?New bitcoins are generated by a competitive and decentralized process called "mining". This process involves that individuals are rewarded by the network for their services. Bitcoin miners are processing transactions and securing the network using specialized hardware and are collecting new bitcoins in exchange.The Bitcoin protocol is designed in such a way that new bitcoins are created at a fixed rate. This makes Bitcoin mining a very competitive business. When more miners join the network, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a profit and miners must seek efficiency to cut their operating costs. No central authority or developer has any power to control or manipulate the system to increase their profits. Every Bitcoin node in the world will reject anything that does not comply with the rules it expects the system to follow.Bitcoins are created at a decreasing and predictable rate. The number of new bitcoins created each year is automatically halved over time until bitcoin issuance halts completely with a total of 21 million bitcoins in existence. At this point, Bitcoin miners will probably be supported exclusively by numerous small transaction fees.GeneralWhat is Bitcoin?Bitcoin is a consensus network that enables a new payment system and a completely digital money. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. From a user perspective, Bitcoin is pretty much like cash for the Internet. Bitcoin can also be seen as the most prominent triple entry bookkeeping system in existence.Who created Bitcoin?Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called "cryptocurrency", which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority. The first Bitcoin specification and proof of concept was published in 2009 in a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi left the project in late 2010 without revealing much about himself. The community has since grown exponentially with many developers working on Bitcoin.Satoshi's anonymity often raised unjustified concerns, many of which are linked to misunderstanding of the open-source nature of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin protocol and software are published openly and any developer around the world can review the code or make their own modified version of the Bitcoin software. Just like current developers, Satoshi's influence was limited to the changes he made being adopted by others and therefore he did not control Bitcoin. As such, the identity of Bitcoin's inventor is probably as relevant today as the identity of the person who invented paper.Who controls the Bitcoin network?Nobody owns the Bitcoin network much like no one owns the technology behind email. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can't force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.How does Bitcoin work?From a user perspective, Bitcoin is nothing more than a mobile app or computer program that provides a personal Bitcoin wallet and allows a user to send and receive bitcoins with them. This is how Bitcoin works for most users.Behind the scenes, the Bitcoin network is sharing a public ledger called the "block chain". This ledger contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user's computer to verify the validity of each transaction. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by digital signatures corresponding to the sending addresses, allowing all users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own Bitcoin addresses. In addition, anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service. This is often called "mining". To learn more about Bitcoin, you can consult the dedicated page and the original paper.Is Bitcoin really used by people?Yes. There are a growing number of businesses and individuals using Bitcoin. This includes brick-and-mortar businesses like restaurants, apartments, and law firms, as well as popular online services such as Namecheap, With these attributes, all that is required for a form of money to hold value is trust and adoption. In the case of Bitcoin, this can be measured by its growing base of users, merchants, and startups. As with all currency, bitcoin's value comes only and directly from people willing to accept them as payment.Bitcoins have value because they are useful as a form of money. Bitcoin has the characteristics of money (durability, portability, fungibility, scarcity, divisibility, and recognizability) based on the properties of mathematics rather than relying on physical properties (like gold and silver) or trust in central authorities (like fiat currencies). In short, Bitcoin is backed by mathematics.What determines bitcoin’s price?The price of a bitcoin is determined by supply and demand. When demand for bitcoins increases, the price increases, and when demand falls, the price falls. There is only a limited number of bitcoins in circulation and new bitcoins are created at a predictable and decreasing rate, which means that demand must follow this level of inflation to keep the price stable. Because Bitcoin is still a relatively small market compared to what it could be, it doesn't take significant amounts of money to move the market price up or down, and thus the price of a bitcoin is still very volatile.How does one acquire bitcoins?As payment for goods or services.Purchase bitcoins at a Bitcoin exchange.Exchange bitcoins with someone near you.Earn bitcoins through competitive mining.While it may be possible to find individuals who wish to sell bitcoins in exchange for a credit card or PayPal payment, most exchanges do not allow funding via these payment methods. This is due to cases where someone buys bitcoins with PayPal, and then reverses their half of the transaction. This is commonly referred to as a chargeback.How difficult is it to make a Bitcoin payment?Bitcoin payments are easier to make than debit or credit card purchases, and can be received without a merchant account. Payments are made from a wallet application, either on your computer or smartphone, by entering the recipient's address, the payment amount, and pressing send. To make it easier to enter a recipient's address, many wallets can obtain the address by scanning a QR code or touching two phones together with NFC technology.What are the advantages of Bitcoin?Payment freedom - It is possible to send and receive bitcoins anywhere in the world at any time. No bank holidays. No borders. No bureaucracy. Bitcoin allows its users to be in full control of their money.Choose your own fees - There is no fee to receive bitcoins, and many wallets let you control how large a fee to pay when spending. Higher fees can encourage faster confirmation of your transactions. Fees are unrelated to the amount transferred, so it's possible to send 100,000 bitcoins for the same fee it costs to send 1 bitcoin. Additionally, merchant processors exist to assist merchants in processing transactions, converting bitcoins to fiat currency and depositing funds directly into merchants' bank accounts daily. As these services are based on Bitcoin, they can be offered for much lower fees than with PayPal or credit card networks.Fewer risks for merchants - Bitcoin transactions are secure, irreversible, and do not contain customers’ sensitive or personal information. This protects merchants from losses caused by fraud or fraudulent chargebacks, and there is no need for PCI compliance. Merchants can easily expand to new markets where either credit cards are not available or fraud rates are unacceptably high. The net results are lower fees, larger markets, and fewer administrative costs.Security and control - Bitcoin users are in full control of their transactions; it is impossible for merchants to force unwanted or unnoticed charges as can happen with other payment methods. Bitcoin payments can be made without personal information tied to the transaction. This offers strong protection against identity theft. Bitcoin users can also protect their money with backup and encryption.Transparent and neutral - All information concerning the Bitcoin money supply itself is readily available on the block chain for anybody to verify and use in real-time. No individual or organization can control or manipulate the Bitcoin protocol because it is cryptographically secure. This allows the core of Bitcoin to be trusted for being completely neutral, transparent and predictable.TransactionsWhy do I have to wait for confirmation?Receiving notification of a payment is almost instant with Bitcoin. However, there is a delay before the network begins to confirm your transaction by including it in a block. A confirmation means that there is a consensus on the network that the bitcoins you received haven't been sent to anyone else and are considered your property. Once your transaction has been included in one block, it will continue to be buried under every block after it, which will exponentially consolidate this consensus and decrease the risk of a reversed transaction. Each confirmation takes between a few seconds and 90 minutes, with 10 minutes being the average. If the transaction pays too low a fee or is otherwise atypical, getting the first confirmation can take much longer. Every user is free to determine at what point they consider a transaction sufficiently confirmed, but 6 confirmations is often considered to be as safe as waiting 6 months on a credit card transaction. If an investor invest at www.primaxxcrypto.tech to double Bitcoin and other cryptos within 7 days, it only takes 3 confirmations during the process of withdrawing incomes made by investors, after doubling 1 bitcoin to 2 bitcoin within 7 days.How much will the transaction fee be?Transactions can be processed without fees, but trying to send free transactions can require waiting days or weeks. Although fees may increase over time, normal fees currently only cost a tiny amount. By default, all Bitcoin wallets listed on Bitcoin add what they think is an appropriate fee to your transactions; most of those wallets will also give you chance to review the fee before sending the transaction.Transaction fees are used as a protection against users sending transactions to overload the network and as a way to pay miners for their work helping to secure the network. The precise manner in which fees work is still being developed and will change over time. Because the fee is not related to the amount of bitcoins being sent, it may seem extremely low or unfairly high. Instead, the fee is relative to the number of bytes in the transaction, so using multisig or spending multiple previously-received amounts may cost more than simpler transactions. If your activity follows the pattern of conventional transactions, you won't have to pay unusually high fees. and Reddit. While Bitcoin remains a relatively new phenomenon, it is growing fast. As of May 2018, the total value of all existing bitcoins exceeded 100 billion US dollars, with millions of dollars worth of bitcoins exchanged daily.

Choosing and applying for a credit cardChoosing a credit cardThere are hundreds of credit cards available, so shop around to get the one that suits you best.Start by thinking about what you want to use the credit card for. This could be to buy things on line or on holiday, to pay your bills or to spread the cost of a purchase. However you choose to use your card, the key thing is whether you will be paying off what you owe every month or spreading repayments over a period.If you can pay the balance off in full and on time each month, you can take advantage of the interest free period. In this case, the interest rate may not be so important but you may want to look at cards with other incentives like cash back. Even if you think you will be able to pay the balance in full each time, it’s worth planning what you’ll do if you can’t.If you want to use the card for borrowing and you won’t be paying off the balance each month, you will usually have to pay interest. In this case, you may want to choose a card with a lower interest rate. Don’t forget to make sure you can afford a regular repayment.For more information about how to choose credit, see Getting the best credit deal.If you’ve applied for credit cards beforeApplying for too many cards or regularly switching cards can affect your credit rating. Each time you make an application it’s recorded on your credit file. Your file will also show if an application is refused. When new providers check your credit file, it can look like you have lots of cards already or that no one else wants to lend to you.Find out more about your credit rating and how lenders decide to give you credit.If you’re struggling to pay what you owe on a credit card, find out how to deal with the debt.Checklist of what to look out for when choosing a credit cardHere’s a checklist of some things to look at when you choose a credit card:Annual Percentage Rate (APR). This is the cost of borrowing on the card, if you don’t pay the whole balance off each month. You can compare the APR for different cards which will help you to choose the cheapest. You should also compare other things about the cards, for example, fees, charges and incentivesminimum repayment. If you don’t pay off the balance each month, you will be asked to repay a minimum amount. This is typically around 3% of the balance due or £5, whichever is higherannual fee. Some cards charge a fee each year for use of the card. The fee is added to the amount due and you will have to pay interest on the fee as well as on your spending, unless you pay it in fullcharges. Check in the credit agreement what other charges apply to the card. You will usually be charged for going over your credit limit, for using the card abroad and for late paymentsintroductory interest rates. This is where you start off paying a low rate of interest or none at all. The rate then increases after a certain amount of time. For example, it could increase after six months or from a certain date. You’ll often see an introductory rate for balance transfers. If you are comparing cards, look at how long the introductory rate lasts as well as the interest rate it changes to at the end of the introductory periodloyalty points or rewards. The points add up depending on the amount you spend and you can then use them to buy goods. Sometimes this is in particular shops. Check how and where the rewards can be used and think about how likely you are to use themcash back. This is where you get money refunded to your card, depending on how much you spend. Check that you are likely to qualify for the cash back. For example, it may only apply if you pay your balance in full each month. A lower interest rate may be a better deal.For more information about APR, see Getting the best credit deal.Comparing cardsKey information you should getWhen you are given information about a credit card, it should include a summary box with standard key information about the card. This should include the interest free period, interest rate and other charges. This is so that you can easily compare different cards.You can find more information about the credit card summary box including an explanation of what all the terms mean, on the UK Cards Association's website at: www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk.Using a comparison websiteYou can use a comparison website to see what different credit card providers are offering. This can help you choose the right card for you. There are lots of comparison websites and not all credit cards will be shown on all sites. So you may need to look around for a particular product.You can find details of some comparison websites in Further help and information.Applying for a credit cardYou can apply for a credit card:on lineby postby phoneat a bank or building society.You will have to fill in a form and the credit card provider will check your credit record with a credit reference agency, to see if you are credit worthy.Your credit record shows information about how you handle your finances, such as your bank account and any other borrowing you have. It tells the provider whether you are a good payer and about any court orders you have had in the last six years. You can check your credit record yourself by contacting one of the credit reference agencies. There is a small fee.For more information about your credit file and how to contact the credit reference agencies, see Being refused credit in Credit.When you fill in the application form for a credit card, be careful to make sure all the information you put is correct. If you are not sure about how to complete the form, ask the credit card provider for help. You will have to sign the form to say all the information is correct and any false information you give may be seen as fraud.Signing a credit agreementIf your application is accepted you will be asked to sign a credit agreement. This is a legal document which sets out what you and the provider are agreeing to. The credit agreement includes details such as how much you can borrow, how much and when to repay, the interest rate and charges that can be added, your rights and responsibilities under the agreement and any other conditions that apply to it. Always try to read the small print so you know exactly what you are agreeing to.Additional card holdersYou can apply for additional cardholders to have permission to use your card. But remember, if you do this you are responsible for paying off whatever they spend on your card. It’s a good idea to agree some rules with any additional card holders about when they can use the card and make sure they tell you about their spending. Otherwise, you could go over your credit limit or have more to pay off than you expected.If your application is refusedProviders don’t have to give you a credit card. Your application may be refused if your credit score is low or you are not a good risk. Ask the provider to tell you which credit reference agency they used if you want to check your credit file.For more information about how credit card providers decide whether to give you credit, see Being refused credit in Credit.Although credit card providers can decide not to give you credit, they are not allowed to discriminate against you when they make their decision. This means they aren't allowed to refuse to give you credit just because of your race, sex, disability, religion, sexuality or where you live.If you think you were discriminated against when you applied for a credit card, get advice from an adviser, for example, at a Citizens Advice Bureau. To search for details of your nearest CAB, including those that can give advice by e-mail, click nearest CAB.RECOMMENDATION: The Best and fastest possible way to get your credit repaired fast is to contact a professional credit repair personnel to assist you in getting your credit fixed in real time, There are obviously many steps to apply when fixing credit on your own. I would recommend you reach out to George Gibbs here on quora and contact him via email in his bio, He is so effective and professional. I got my credit fixed very fast with his help and he has been helping so many people too and I would recommend you reach out to him today.

Let me invite you on a journey around the world: From the high streets of London … to Zhengzhou, a booming Tier II/III city in China … to Apple’s corporate headquarters in sunny California … to the Emerald Isle … and finally back here to Lower Manhattan.As we travel on this journey, I will try to explain how the money flows from that point-of-sale purchase to my brokerage account when the company pays out its quarterly dividend.This journey is interesting because it helps shine a light onto the increasingly complex and globalized world in which we live.(1) Retail — the Apple StoreI walk into the Apple Store on picturesque Regent Street in London’s posh Mayfair district. 15 minutes later, I stroll out with a base-level 64 GB iPhone X for £999[1].The money starts to flow as soon as I successfully input the PIN for my Barclaycard into the payment terminal:The U.K. has a 20% value-added tax[2] (similar to a sales tax in certain states in the U.S.) which means £167 comes right off the top to fund government and public expenditures.Since the iPhone was purchased with a credit card, another 3% or so is taken out by the payment processing companies, leaving the retail operation with a net total of £803 collected. If I had paid with cash, there would be some indirect cash handling expense that the retail operation would absorb (probably higher than 3%).For illustrative purposes, let’s say that Apple targets 20% retail margins to cover the costs of its beautifully designed Apple Stores. This means that the store is allocated about £161 per iPhone to pay for that expensive Regent Street rent, store employee salaries, Apple Geniuses, utilities, depreciation on the store’s capital improvements, etc.This leaves £642 that ultimately flows to Apple’s UK entity.(2) Manufacturing — A Globalized Supply ChainNow we need to hop on a Cathay Pacific flight from London to Hong Kong with a quick layover before transferring to a Dragon Air flight to Zhengzhou, a city in China that is about the size of New York City’s five boroughs … that many of you have probably never heard of.Don’t worry, though. These days even the locals simply refer to it as “iPhone City”.Zhengzhou is the capital of the densely populated, relatively impoverished Henan Province whose industrial economy had historically been centered around light textiles and food processing. Situated at the transition between the North China plain and the Qinling mountains, it is about a 4–5 hour (around 900 km) high-speed train ride from Shanghai.This is where Apple’s Taiwanese contract manufacturing partner Foxconn decided to locate its second major industrial operation after its main Shenzhen complex. With generous support from the local government, Foxconn spent hundreds of millions of dollars building out factory operations in an area that was specifically set up to export consumer electronics. For example, it is located in a “special bonded zone” that is legally considered foreign soil under Chinese regulation (doing it this way helps makes the logistics more efficient).In August 2010, the first lines at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory began production[3]. A little over eight years later, it produces around half of all of the iPhones in the world, churning out upwards of 500,000 per day.Along with 350,000 employees who work at the factory (during peak times), tens of millions of components from all around the world and other regions in China stream into Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory on a daily basis. Many of the semiconductor components are designed in one part of the world only to have their ECAD designs[4] electronically transmitted to Taiwan’s chip foundries for fabrication.Here is a summary of how the bill of materials (BOM) breaks down:My recently purchased base-level 64 GB iPhone uses an estimated $370 worth of materials and components[5]. Adding in around $35 in assembly and logistics costs and we are looking at a total BOM cost of around $405.The biggest cost item is the OLED display from Samsung, making up around 27% of the BOM. This is because Samsung is the dominant supplier of advanced OLED screen technology and is able to command premium prices[6]. It is also why Apple is pushing so hard to foster greater competition in the industry[7].Another notable component is the RF chipset supplied by Qualcomm. While a relatively modest 4% of the BOM, what is not included in the table above are additional 4G licensing fees that are paid separately by Apple. I’ll come back to this in the next section.Many of the other discrete analog and digital semiconductor components primarily supplied by U.S., German and Japanese fabless semiconductor designers are often fabricated in chip foundries in Taiwan (e.g. TSMC).Notably, China’s value-add to the BOM is relatively low and mainly comprised of more labor-intensive elements or less advanced components like the lithium-ion battery, packaging or simple accessories like the standard white Apple headphones. Overall I estimate China’s contribution to the BOM at around 13%.Okay, we’ve spent enough time in the “iPhone City”. We now need to catch our Air China flight from Zhengzhou to San Francisco via Beijing. We are heading to Silicon Valley.(3) Corporate — One Apple ParkThis is where the magic happens.Apple’s recently opened new headquarters[8] occupy 2.8 million sf in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Built at a construction cost of around $5 billion, it houses 12,000 highly compensated[9] employees.It is here (well, technically nearby at the old Apple Campus) that the iPhone and other Apple products were conceived and designed. It is where corporate executives like Tim Cook make big decisions about the next versions of existing product lines, the next advertising campaign, or how the company should allocate the product development dollars.And this is where — at this very moment in late 2018 — executives are likely debating whether it makes strategic and financial sense to diversify Apple’s manufacturing base outside of China by setting up another “iPhone City” in places like Vietnam[10].These corporate expenses are primarily fixed costs that you can amortize across the entire global revenue base of the company. As an example, in FY2018, Apple’s R&D expenses totaled $14.2 billion, or 5.4% of revenue. If we break it down on a per-unit basis, this comes out to something like $41 per iPhone sold [see Note i]:Between the £642 ($813) that flows into Apple’s UK corporate entity and the $405 BOM, you have $407 that flows back to Apple Inc. This money will be used to pay for:Corporate costs including sales and marketing, product development and general and administrative costsThese costs are mostly comprised of employee compensation, whether in the form of salary, bonus or stock-based compensation.Rent for all of the leased office space around the world; maintenance and depreciation for its owned properties.Spending is heavily concentrated in Cupertino/California although Austin, Texas[11] is rapidly turning into Apple’s version of “HQ2”[12].Apple also spends heavily on brand advertising.Global licensing fees / QualcommAs I alluded to above, Qualcomm is entitled to collect royalties on any device that connects to a 3G or 4G network (which includes basically all smartphones).This is because of patents and intellectual property that it created (and acquired) over the years, primarily around a “channel access method” called code-division multiple access (CDMA) on which almost all modern wireless standards are based today.Moreover, the licensing agreements that it negotiated many years ago stipulate that it collects a percentage of the entire “final sale” price of the smartphone — so as these devices have gotten more complicated (and more expensive) over time, Qualcomm has collected more revenue.As you might imagine, this is causing a lot of friction along a number of fronts — many companies are questioning why Qualcomm should collect the same percentage (or any percentage at all) on peripheral components that have nothing to do with wireless.This is one of the primary reasons why so many other companies are focused on building their own IP portfolios for the next generation of wireless standards (5G). This article from Macro Polo[13] discusses the whole saga in detail and I would recommend reading it if you have time.In any case, what this means for Apple is that it has to pay 3.5% of the final sale price of the iPhone to Qualcomm (with “final sale price” capped at $400 to $500[14]).After paying off all of its corporate expenses and (reluctantly[15]) cutting a massive check to Qualcomm, there is $281 left. This equates to 27% of the net revenue collected on Regent Street. Apple’s overall operating margin is 27% … so this passes the sanity check [see Note ii].(4) The Tax Man“We all know this deal is as certain as death and taxes.” — from Meet Joe Black, one of my all-time favorite movies.Apple is enormously profitable. In its last fiscal year (FY2018: 12 months ending 9/30/2018), it generated $72 billion of earnings before taxes. That is $72 followed by 9 zeroes. And the Tax Man is salivating at the sight of all of that taxable income.Historically, the U.S. corporate tax rate was 35%. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the corporate rate was lowered to 21%. Including state-level corporate taxes, the average corporate tax rate is 26%[16]. Apple is a U.S. company headquartered in California, so all we have to do is multiply the $72 billion by 26% and call it a day, right?Wrong.In FY2018, Apple provisioned $13.4 billion in corporate income taxes, which comes out to an 18% effective tax rate. That’s 8% lower than the prevailing rates. How is this possible?The reason is that tax rates are different all around the world, so multi-national corporations (and their accountants) are always trying to figure out how to legally lower the amount of taxes they have to pay. For uber-profitable companies like Apple, the stakes are massive — each 1% reduction in your effective tax rate is $700 million of additional net income.Technology companies are especially good at this, because much of what they are selling is “intangible” (i.e. software, intellectual property, etc.) and they also tend to sell globally which means the flexibility of multiple tax jurisdictions to play with. So even though the IP assets that Apple develops are mostly created in Cupertino and the United States, from a legal and tax perspective, the IP is actually located outside of the country.This is why instead of flying to Washington, D.C. where the IRS’ headquarters are located, we are now boarding an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, Ireland.Photo: Sharp Magazine: The Travelling Man — Dublin, IrelandIn the aftermath of World War II, while most of Western Europe boomed on the back of the Marshall Plan and post-war reconstruction, Ireland was held back by its “economic nationalism” resulting high tariffs and import substitution policies. Its economy stagnated and the country entered the 1980s with high levels of public debt, 20% unemployment and a public sector that accounted for a third of the workforce[17].Economic reforms starting in 1987 led to reduced public spending, lower taxes and increased competitiveness — especially for global capital. The government made a major effort to lure technology companies such as Intel and Microsoft. In the 1990s, its economy finally began to pick up and soon people were talking about Ireland as the “Celtic Tiger”[18]. In less than three decades, Ireland went from being one of the poorest countries in Western Europe to one of its wealthiest.One of the areas that helped Ireland attract so much foreign investment was favorable tax policy. Without getting into the details[19], Ireland enacted policy that made it possible for companies to shift profits on intangible assets like software and patents from higher-tax locations to lower-tax ones. For global technology companies like Apple, this is the main reason why its effective tax rates are so much lower than the prevailing tax rates of its primary tax domicile in the United States.And this is the reason why wee little Ireland features so heavily in Apple’s annual report[20]:When Apple sells its products overseas, the vast majority of the profits remain offshore. Bringing this cash onshore would require Apple to pay something called a “repatriation tax” to the IRS. Leaving it offshore means that it can delay its payment. Instead, this cash can be used for overseas acquisitions, or perhaps they can wait for the U.S. government to issue periodic “repatriation holidays” to try to coax that money back home. But more often than not, the offshore cash is parked in government and corporate bonds [see Note iii].Out of approximately $257 billion in cash (and equivalents, including bonds) held by Apple, about 93% of it is sitting offshore[21].In any case, the corporate income taxes that Apple does pay — mostly from profits on its U.S.-generated revenue — comes out to about $39 per iPhone. This leaves $243 in after-tax profits.(5) The ShareholdersTime to head home. I hop on a United flight from Dublin to John F. Kennedy Airport. I head home, fire up my PC, log onto Quora on one screen and my trading platform on another.This is where we wrap up our journey following these money flows around the world.The $243 in after-tax profits belongs to the bondholders and equityholders in the company. More accurately, nearly all of it ends up with the equityholders.Let’s start with the bondholders: Apple has about $115 billion in outstanding bonds that pay lower rates than the U.S. government (less than 3%). It pays out about $3.2 billion in interest expense, which is actually more than offset by over $5 billion it earns from interest income on all of its offshore bonds.Now some of you might be wondering why such a profitable company like Apple needs to issue bonds. This is where we turn our attention to the shareholders (disclosure: I am one of them).The reason is because Apple wants to return capital to shareholders by repurchasing its shares. However, to repurchase its shares, it needs to use onshore cash and as we learned above, getting that offshore cash onshore means paying the repatriation tax.But some enterprising investment bankers figured out a while ago that instead of repatriating the cash, Apple could come up with the cash by issuing onshore bonds that are indirectly collateralized by all of that offshore cash (and all of the other assets of the business). Because it’s Apple, the interest rates are almost negligible. Now Apple can take this newly raised onshore cash and buy back its shares without having to pay the repatriation tax.On top of share buybacks, Apple pays dividends on a quarterly basis. In FY2018, Apple paid out close to $14 billion in dividends. November 8th, 2018 was the most recent ex-dividend date for Apple shareholders[22]. The cash showed up in my brokerage account a week later. For every share you held prior to that date, Apple paid out 73 cents.Since announcing its original Capital Return program in 2012[23], Apple has returned approximately $249 billion to its shareholders via share buybacks and $74 billion via dividends. These share buybacks have allowed Apple to reduce the number of shares outstanding by 25% since 2012. This creates value for shareholders because it means that one share you hold today entitles you to a much larger share of future profits than one share that you held back in 2012 (split-adjusted, of course).The vast majority of Apple shares are held by Americans, either directly or indirectly via index funds, mutual funds, hedge funds or their pensions. This means that Americans have disproportionately benefited from the enormous amount of value created (and partially returned) by Apple over the years.SummaryThank you to the brave few that have stuck with me on my journey all the way to the end. Your reward is the last, and most important table — how all the various money flows get split up by country:As you can see very clearly, the United States takes the highest share of economic value-add. This is even in the scenario we imagined above where the iPhone is sold overseas (i.e. the U.K.) in a jurisdiction that charges relatively high consumption taxes.For iPhones that are sold here in the United States, the fraction of economic value-add that circulates back into the American economy is over two-thirds once you factor in the retail operations.Think about that for a minute: Apple has 132,000 employees (note: this figure includes many lower-paid retail workers), many of whom are located overseas. Yet the American economy is able to capture over 70% of the economic value of an iPhone. Foxconn has well over a million people in China working to assemble iPhones and other Apple products — yet is only able to capture 13% of its value. Let’s keep this in perspective next time we hear complaints about how advanced economies are getting “screwed over” by globalization.Finally, one of the big ironies is despite the massive surplus value that Apple clearly creates for the American economy, the way that global supply chains and international trade accounting work, Apple products actually add to our bilateral trade deficit with China[24]. This is why it is so important to understand how the money flows really work — so that you can avoid enacting trade and other policies that can end up completely backfiring.Explanatory Notes[Note i] The average ASP per iPhone sold was $766, not the £999 retail price. 5.4% of $766 is $41.[Note ii] On top of hardware sales, Apple also collects significant ancillary revenue: its 30% cut of iOS apps and in-app purchases, search fees from Google[25], etc. Operating margins on iPhones sold in the store should also have slightly lower margins than those sold online due to lower overhead costs. Finally, margins on iPhones are typically higher than margins on iPads, Macs and other Apple hardware products.[Note iii] With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, changes in the tax system have reduced the disincentive for companies to repatriate taxes back to the United States[26]. Following this, Apple announced that it was going to start repatriating its cash over an 8-year period[27]. While it seems likely that this change the onshore/offshore cash dynamic, history has shown how the amazing creativity of investment bankers and accountants when it comes to creating new and sophisticated tax structures.Footnotes[1] iPhone Xs UK release - Best deals, prices and how to pre-order new Apple flagship[2] VAT rates[3] How China Built ‘iPhone City’ With Billions in Perks for Apple’s Partner[4] Electronic design automation - Wikipedia[5] IHS Markit Teardown Reveals What Higher Apple iPhone 8 Plus Cost Actually Buys[6] Samsung's OLED iPhone display supply dominance challenged[7] China breaks into Samsung's OLED dominance[8] Apple Park - Wikipedia[9] How Much Is The Average Salary Of An Apple Employee? | Cult of Mac[10] Glenn Luk's answer to Is Vietnam likely to implement the economic system that China currently uses and the Asian Tigers as well as Japan formerly used?[11] Apple is spending $1 billion on a new campus in Austin[12] How did NYC woo Amazon to Long Island City?[13] From Windfalls to Pitfalls: Qualcomm’s China Conundrum - MacroPolo[14] Qualcomm's patent deals aim to ease Apple, regulator tensions, exec...[15] Chinese court upholds Qualcomm's complaint that Apple infringed on two patents[16] US Corporate Income Tax Now More Competitive | Tax Foundation[17] Economy of the Republic of Ireland - Wikipedia[18] Celtic Tiger - Wikipedia[19] Ireland as a tax haven - Wikipedia[20] https://s22.q4cdn.com/396847794/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2018/Q4/10-K-2018-(As-Filed).pdf[21] Are you a robot?[22] Apple Inc. (AAPL) Ex-Dividend Date Scheduled for November 08, 2018[23] Apple Announces Plans to Initiate Dividend and Share Repurchase Program[24] Glenn Luk's answer to What can the US do to bring back 25% of the manufacturing being outsourced in China right now in 10 years?[25] Google is paying Apple billions per year to remain on the iPhone, Bernstein says[26] Evaluating the Changed Incentives for Repatriating Foreign Earnings[27] Apple's plan to repatriate $285 billion in cash to the US could be a big boost for investors