A tax-light Apple, a porn-free Google, and borrowed bitcoin

Apple's new red shade for the iPhone. MUST CREDIT: Apple Apple's new red shade for the iPhone. MUST CREDIT: Apple Photo: Apple Photo: Apple Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close A tax-light Apple, a porn-free Google, and borrowed bitcoin 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Apple in the red

In what passes for innovation in Cupertino these days, Apple announced a new red iPhone Tuesday. But down under, Kiwis are seeing red over what some in New Zealand are calling tax dodging. The New Zealand Herald reported that Apple paid no taxes over the past decade, despite selling nearly $3 billion in phones, tablets and computers in the country. Under a legal arrangement, Apple pays income tax in Australia, not the smaller South Pacific country. “It looks like their tax department is even more innovative than their product designers,” said Green Party co-leader James Shaw. Apple has also come under fire in Europe for its international tax practices. The company says it follows local rules.

Betting on bitcoin

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If a digital currency doesn’t strike you as inherently risky, how about borrowing money to place wagers on its price gyrations? Coinbase is letting customers trade on margin — that is, on borrowed money — in bitcoin as well as Litecoin and Ethereum, two similar currencies, TechCrunch reports. This isn’t for everyone, though: To comply with the Commodity Exchange Act, Coinbase is requiring that individual investors have at least $5 million to invest before they engage in margin trading.

See you in court

Googlers can now sue their employer if they’re exposed to porn on the job, according to the Information. The company backed down on requiring all 72,000 employees of Google and other Alphabet subsidiaries to waive their right to sue over adult content at the workplace after a lawsuit alleged that the policy violated labor laws. Some Google employees have to view porn in dealing with Web searches, but it’s not clear why engineers working on, say, self-driving cars needed to sign on.

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