Hey Snackers,
Our 2019 resolution was to make financial news digestible.
We slept on it... and we're going with the same thing for 2020. You can help:
Turn me on with your electric wheel... Mother Earth isn't a fan of burning gas — So is 2020 the year we switch to something else? The verdict is: a (strong) maybe. Carmakers spent the final week of 2019 humblebragging their future-focused electrification accomplishments.
Honda isn't convinced... The Boston Red Sox to Toyota's Yankees, Honda's experience with electric goes back to '99 (remember that salamander-looking Insight?). So its CEO is qualified to say he's "not sure" the world wants full-electric cars yet. Instead, Honda's focused on improving fuel efficiency with ybrid tech and won't go full electric "anytime soon."
Electric's 2 biggest issues = Price + Battery... If you haven't bought an electric car, it's probably because they're too expensive or you're nervous about running out of juice mid-ride (aka "range anxiety"). Carmakers know that — here are some ways they're trying to fix it:
New New Year's Resolution... Stop using a sketchy international scheme with a charming name to sneak out of US taxes. Instead of going to the gym more, Google's parent company Alphabet will end its "Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich" tax minimization strategy in 2020 — they saved billions and only paid a single-digit tax rate on money earned outside the US through this ~~structure~~ loophole.
It sounds like a bar order, and reads like a Spring Break itinerary... but it's actually a perfectly legal travel route for money that won't trigger US income taxes or Europe's witholding taxes — and those happen to be most of Google's profits abroad. Here's how the cash moves:
Tax policy can move economies... It isn't just that the corporate tax rate for US companies has been cut from 35% to 21%. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 now lets American companies bring back cash they made/hoarded abroad without paying additional US taxes. Now Google can bring back its billions in overseas cash to potentially invest in the US — or return to shareholders as dividends.
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Google, Uber, Amazon, and Tesla
ID: 1046827