Coca-Cola Taxes

and i bet nobody goes to jail in the end, and ultimately they end up profiting after paying it back

You assume they’re paying it back and don’t do some pittance of a public service instead.
This article is basically their public flogging, they've paid their dues and can reenter society
For this to be criminal it'd probably require intent to be proven which is difficult without a "smoking gun" of an email being like "do this to avoid taxes or be fired"- CEO. For it just to be civil fines is a lot simpler to show. Their inevitable appeal and potential reduction in fine is a different issue.
- Which is hilarious because ignorance is not a defence for poor people.
- It almost sounds like you're saying corporations are not people. Don't let the conservatives hear you say that.
- 16 billion dollars of money laundering isn’t an “honest mistake”…. criminal intent abounds

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.

I think it would be fair to destroy product you see in stores. something to weaken plastic on the outside of bottles, or shaking them. things that make product unsellable, or make it make a mess.
these companies are beyond evil, clearly simple "im not buying this" doesn't work; retailers must be punished for stocking this shit.
- If it's on retail shelves, Coke already has their money. You have to aim higher.
- Your motivation is honorable, but this plan would only impact innocent retail employees and would not hurt Coca-Cola at all. I like your initiative, though.
- Why would making a mess at a random 7-11 hurt Coca Cola in any way? What is the logic here?

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

The intangible property for coke is a secret recipe that is preserved in some vault in the US. There's no transfer of IP here and that's not what's in dispute.
The facts are centred around the profitability of concentrate producers that earn the super profits. Operating entities and the US makes a slim margin.
You can read a better informed analysis here.
- The dispute centres on Coke subsidiaries in Ireland, Brazil, Eswatini and four other countries that manufacture concentrate, the syrup that gets mixed with carbonated water to make drinks such as Coca-Cola, Fanta and Sprite. The subsidiaries sit between the US parent company, which owns the brands, and the bottling companies that make the final product.
  The company routinely shifted production of concentrate to countries with favourable tax rates, the US tax court found. The subsidiary in Ireland, which had a tax rate as low as 1.4 per cent, at one point shipped to bottlers in 90 countries.
  Unlike independent contract manufacturers, which typically have low margins, an IRS analysis found these Coke subsidiaries were unusually profitable — earning a return on assets two-and-a-half times that of the US parent company that owns the iconic brands. By controlling how much the subsidiaries must pay other parts of the Coke network for use of the brands and marketing, and by setting the prices they can charge bottlers, Coke itself in effect decided their profitability, the court heard.
  Those profit levels were “astronomical”, Judge Albert Lauber wrote in an initial ruling in 2020.

Always preferred Pepsi anyway.

looks at Pepsi's record

Ah shit

- You know, maybe all those hippies that have been home brewing their sodas lately have the right idea
I thought child slaves are good because more profit? /s
Water is not problematic (except for at least four fifths of bottled water)

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.

Good. I hope it hurts.
But it's only back taxes on profits we know about
- Sure, it might be prudent to always assume any reported white collar crimes are at least one order of magnitude greater than we get to know. That said, I was really impressed with their stock ticker company description blurb where they strive to "honor God" in all their works.
Do people upvote these comments without checking anything? Does it sound reasonable for one of the largest companies in the world to be worth only $11 billion?
The Coca-Cola Company is worth $296 billion. I don't think they've been worth only $11 billion since the '80s.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KO/
- I'm going to stop using this site, as it currently states a market cap of "11,091,895,682" dollars. Thanks for the correction.
This sort of stuff is why the corporate veil needs to be abolished. If they're not criminals, then they can buy insurance.

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.

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.
- How would that help! Coke sells cola, not Twizzlers! /s
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
I wish they'd pay the taxes in the country the drinks were bought. Even if the US manages to scrape back some, that's only one country seeing the taxes owed.
Fun fact, most laws are written by the corporations to which they apply. There's no possible way for politicians to actually write all of the laws, so they rely on their corporate ~~paymasters~~ lobbyists to go ahead and write them, then have their staff skim through it all, and then sign off on it before it goes off to the chamber for a vote.
- There's no possible way for politicians to actually write all of the laws
  Then they can ask nonprofits for help, or transition to liquid democracy, or just write simpler fewer laws. What they're doing now is worse than doing nothing.

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.

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

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.
- Branding is one helluva drug
- The other reason is they make a good profit selling medicinal cocaine.
- Sounds like an excuse to extract cocaine to me
When did they quit putting cocaine it? If I'd known that then I wouldn't have been buying it anymore!
- Around 120 years ago, give or take

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

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.
- We need workers to own the economy
  We need an economic system that rewards acting in the common good. This system, but with the workers in charge is still this system which rewards all the bad stuff of modern capitalism
- You know there's a range of options between unfettered capitalism and unfettered communism right?
  Slap communism on a population that's spent the past few generations training itself to reward cunts and you get the USSR on steroids.
- I understand the value here, but I prefer to keep control over my business decisions. If employees are interested in having more influence, they should consider starting their own ventures. I believe maintaining direct control allows me to steer my business according to my vision and goals.
I'm equally sick of pretty much every sports stadium, event venue, theme park, cruise ship, etc. offering these companies' beverages and all the consumers in the world that really don't withhold from supporting these companies, despite their obvious shittiness.

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

Mansions and yachts made of painted bill stacks

Coca Cola also sponsors this event:

Meta and Koch Industries to Sponsor Event Featuring Climate Denier Barry Cooper

Now do Cargill, Tyson, etc al.

A bit off topic, but US Coke tastes like shit

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.
- Can confirm: HFCS makes everything taste awful and I feel awful afterwards. It also doesn't satisfy my hunger/thirst the way cane sugar does, which is very concerning.
  I only ever buy CocaCola (on special occasions) when it's imported from Mexico, since that's still made with cane sugar. This is nuts since it 1) costs more 2) is an American company whose product is being shipped back to us 3) is a superior product but has to be made elsewhere for "reasons."
- As if the US is the only country drinking flavored HFCS... 🙄
Yeah. Colombian is better.

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

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2024/08/06/coca-cola-could-face-16-billion-irs-bill-after-its-tax-court-arguments-fall-flat

Thank you friend

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

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???

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.
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
- Your crazy if you think Clarence is getting $300M. Studies have shown lobbying works for shocking little sums of money. Couple of first class tickets to a resort and a month there, easily under $30K.

And how many arrests?

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

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.

several dollars a pop
Nice.
Externalities with no direct impact on the company? No way! Milton Friedman assured me that capitalism was perfectly balanced with 0 exploits!
- Why, the free market can solve externalities! We just need an economy with
  [checks notes]
  negligible transaction costs. Easy, any day now!
Don't blame a soda company of you being fat and chugging 130 calories down 12 ounces at a time. Own up to your own shit. "This item tastes good. I blame it for ne being unhealthy because I won't stop eating/drinking too much of it"
- In isolation that is true, but it's not a fair game. Own up to your own shit when They lobby against restrictions in schools to target children with their addictive substances. They have marketing budgets in the hundreds of millions to convince us one more won't hurt. They employ psychologists to come up with the most manipulative strategys.
  It's not a level playing field.

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!

The IRS charges interest and penalties.

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

And lots of people will stop drinking it because of that, and they will be healthier thanks to it.
- I know quite a few people who have serious Coke addictions. They will simply refuse to drink any other brand and they go through Trumpian levels of the stuff daily. I don't know what it is about this particular brand. I've never met an RC head, but Coke heads are a dime a dozen, unlike the ten bucks a dozen their drug of choice charges.
- Lol doubt.
And cut wages at the bottom end of the employment ladder, gotta safeguard that C-suite bonus
- The CFO, who originally manufactured the tax dodge and got a bonus for doing so, will now have to work out a "restructuring" strategy (IE, cut wages and layoffs) to cover for the increased tax burden... Which will earn them another bonus.
  Edit: I don't know that any of this is true
we must never take any action against companies they'll just raise prices or leave the country or fire everyone or or or or or
If they really have you so much by the balls then they're a threat and need to be taken down
- Keep going, I’m listening.
  All my comment was saying is that this is a toothless judgment.
By less than the profit that was taxed, because elasticity exists.

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

... and?

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

But the IRS will come after meeee! /s

What, do you expect the Coca-Cola corporation to hire accountants and lawyers to keep track of changes in tax law?
- you hire ONE accountant and have to pay the govt 16bn

Is this part of the pay off to Biden's IRS funding increase?

Shorting their stock in 3, 2, …

Nail them to the wall.

There would be real cause to celebrate if we could actually kill Coca-Cola forever.

They'll pay up... Pay up to the wealth defense industry.

Which works out to around $29,200,000.00 / DAY in profits, not even total revenue but actual in the pocket profits, for selling sugar water with some flavor additives...

LOL suck it you parasitic corporate fucks.

So they jack up the prices of their products

How much can they jack up their prices? It's already like $10 USD for a 12pk of soda.
- In the machine where i work they are $5 for one 12oz can
Who the fuck is buying coke at $10/12pk as it is. That's the real Avocado Toast. Holy shit.

i dont even know why soft drinks are so wide spread. theyre unflavorful and not even that cheap anymore

Unflavourful?
There are so many things you can complain about and you pick the one things so false an entirely new genre of soft drinks had to be created to tone shit down. Eg; flavored seltzers
You may actually have a medical issue affecting your taste buds, or you've never drank a real soda.
Soda is literally an assault on your taste buds.... Your tongue is completely numb 😂

Tweeted from my iPhone because I will shame any company except Apple

If you want to boycott a brand don't spam their brand name on top of the frontpage

What if you want other people to boycott the brand as well?
- Do it smartly and don't give them free ads

If a government or a corporation has 16 billion dollars, is completely inconsequential to me. I don't see anything of either

Did you drive anywhere on a road today? If so you've already been given more from public spending than you will ever get from Coca Cola.
Government money does a lot of really important things. If you want those things to better reflect your priorities then you need to get more involved in the process (especially at the municipal level, where you will see the most direct impact from government spending).
- No doubt that it does. However, pretending like the world would be a perfect place if those darn corporations would just pay all their taxes is foolish.
You are part of why Elon Musk et al can exist.
You do not know your enemy when you see or hear them.
- Elon Musk is not my enemy. The fact that billionaires got a massive pile of money doesn'ylt affect me in the slightest.
  You know what does affect me? Corrupt government officials that embezzle public funds, spend it on stupid projects that only enrich their friends and families. That affects me.
  You really think that giving the government access to even more money will help you? Hell no. It's going to end up in the same hands as now, just more of it.
  Taxes are a borderline infinite money source, and if you don't have to worry about s source drying up you start wasting it, which is exactly what's happening in many countries now.
Said the defeatist
That is a valid take. It also a sign that the current system isn't working.
The people should be in control of the government and the government should spend money on its people.
Unfortunately, that isn't the case right now. We need to work together to fix this.
- Jup. Governments are way too large for their own good, gets involved in way too many private matters and is insanely expensive. We need to drastically downsize the entire thing and have it focussed on their core job again.