Like other U.S. companies, Apple pays an extreme tax penalty for bringing its foreign profits home to invest in the U.S. This is due both to the punitive U.S. tax rate and the fact that the U.S. is virtually alone in refusing to embrace a territorial taxsystem that applies corporateincome taxes only in the jurisdiction where the money is earned.
Effective January 2013, Slovakia, with a 19% flat incometaxsystem, raised its corporatetax rate to 23%, and introduced a second 25% tax bracket for higher personal incomes.