Apple is heavily biased on the subject so I would not take their PR at face value. It's in their best interest to pretend that all the value is created in the US in order to reduce taxes.
Let's say I can recreate the new IPhone with only 1/1000 of the budget of Apple's R&D, would I make a profit? Yes of course I would. If Apple could create their new IPhone for only 100$ of total R&D, be sure they would do it.
On the other hand, ask yourself why there is no Apple Store in a lot of African countries. It's because Apple does not meet the local markets requirements for a store there to be profitable, so they would not get any value out of it.
R&D being a cost center is the reason most of the countries in the world have tax-breaks specifically on R&D and also why the copyright laws are that harsh to prevent ripping of all the value by selling copies of your competitor.
If Apple was able to realize their R&D value income taxes in France rather than the USA on all French sales, they would probably pay less, not more, than what they are now.
At anyrate, value is well defined across the world. If it was define the way you want, the countries would see all their exporters as freeloaders, not paying for the infrastructure that is realizing their profit. Heck, places like Switzerland and Singapore wouldn’t be able to survive.
> If Apple was able to realize their R&D value income taxes in France rather than the USA on all French sales, they would probably pay less, not more, than what they are now.
Tax breaks are on R&D, not sales and Apple does not have any R&D in France so I don't follow you...
> At anyrate, value is well defined across the world.
There's no common tax laws across the world so this does not seem to be true.
> Sales is not the only source of value to be had. It is weird that you are on this site and think development is value free.
I find it the opposite, I find weird that you are on this site and think value magically appears out of R&D since the countless startups which are failing every month... Just look at YCombinator data from the past 5 year and I bet most of the startups back then (which had products) failed because they did not generate enough revenue to sustain themselves.
Let's say I can recreate the new IPhone with only 1/1000 of the budget of Apple's R&D, would I make a profit? Yes of course I would. If Apple could create their new IPhone for only 100$ of total R&D, be sure they would do it.
On the other hand, ask yourself why there is no Apple Store in a lot of African countries. It's because Apple does not meet the local markets requirements for a store there to be profitable, so they would not get any value out of it.
R&D being a cost center is the reason most of the countries in the world have tax-breaks specifically on R&D and also why the copyright laws are that harsh to prevent ripping of all the value by selling copies of your competitor.