My response was that early repayment is illegal – and it's not. Neither on personal loans (where it is rare because of regulations) nor on corporate bonds – where it is very, very common. (I would be hard pressed to find a bond that did not have a penalty for early repayment.)

And while Tesla's bond is a corporate bond – it's not really. I have said elsewhere that I would doubt if there was a early repayment clause.

For personal loans this is true - not so much as illegal as a lot of regulation to discourage it. Most bonds have penalties for early repayment.

Hey - we don't know if he is a guy. Her could be a girl. Or a dog. Or a AI. Who knows?

Even without a penalty the US Treasury will make money. They get the principal back – just less interest.

Most corp bonds issued that have a call feature in them (i.e. a early repay feature) has a penalty. Normally 1 to 2 percent in the early life of the loan, but steadily decreasing.

Here is an example. A company issues a 10 year bond at 10%. 3 years latter the interest rate is 5%. They call back the high interest rate bonds and issue new ones at 5%. This is bad for the bond holder because instead of having a 10% bond they now have cash. If they went ahead and replaced it they would only get 5%. In order to stop that, the company usually has to call the bond at 102. - that is for every $100 they need to pay $102.

I doubt the US Treasury would have put a penalty for an early call – but I am just guessing.

I agree that it is a nice sentiment, but English tends to be a modifier-first, head-final order nomenclature. Think Songbird vs. Birdsong. It’s longer, it has more words – you are going against the nature grain of language.

D-Wave is selling this as a commercial product, and as a commercial product it seems lacking. Now, if we are talking about increasing fund on R&D – that would be a different story.

Here is a link to a good article.
      There were 3 tests with D-Wave going against a generic algorithm.
      It tied on 2 or the 3 tests, but beat the generic algorithm running 3,600 times faster.
      However, if it went against a specialized algorithm it was just as fast.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21578027-first-real-world-contests-between-quantum-computers-and-standard-ones-faster

There are 2 countries that do it like this - America and Eritrea. So, no, not most. Everybody else uses the source definition.

No, its stupid - not me. IIRC, this is what happened in the 1970s

Ford would earn $100 of profit from its British subsidiary.

Britain uses a source definition of income for tax and had a 70% corporate tax rate, so Ford had to pay Britain $70 in taxes.

America uses a domicile definition of income and had a 40% tax rate. Since the British subsidiary was American owned, America claimed 40% of the $100, or $40.

Or $110 in taxes for every $100 in profits. Which takes us back to standards and compatibility. The answer would have been for America to move to a source definition – like the rest of the world. Instead we put in place a lot of kludges. When tax lawyers figured out how to exploit those kludges, patches where piled on top – but the rotten core is still at the bottom.

Yep, that is called double taxation. Corporate taxes are paid when profits are earned, and you pay personal taxes when you receive that profit (either directly though dividends or indirectly by selling the shares at a higher price.) People have debated if this is fair or not. I am for low, simple corporate taxes.

And sadly the board is not having that conversation with the shareholders. Now I don’t own any Apple stock directly – only though index mutual funds. But I still expect decent behavior from ALL public companies. (Actually, Apple is not that bad – but this is a glaring point of non-performance on their part.)

I have heard Neil Gaiman do voice acting work – audio play adaptation of a Gene Wolf story – (I am not counting his readings of his own audio books.) He was good. He does have a great voice.

They have it in short term corp bonds and US Treasuries. Corp bonds is basically what a bank does. Do I want Apple to go into banking? US Treasuries – well that’s money to the government – not what I would consider investing.

Nope, there are no legal limits.

Taxes are paid on earnings – i..e. when the profit is made. Not when that profit is distributed – i.e. dividends and buybacks.

This is true.

Yes, but you would be paying lower taxes. Cap Gains taxed are lower than personal income – which is rate of dividends – if you ignore the QDI / DRD rules.

But you can get the same lower tax rate with a stock buyback.

Which leads to the question – why am I investing in Apple? It’s not because they are earning the rate of inflation on their cash pile. If I wanted that I could open a bank account. That cash should either be put to work doing something that will earn more than bank account or be returned (less any money need for a rainy day or such – but Apple has not explained why it needs so much rainy day money.).

Maybe – if you are lucky. Depends on the tax code in the foreign country and what kind of tax treaty (if any) they have signed with the US. Generally you only get a tax credit which reduces but does eliminate the double taxation. FYI, corporate taxes and individual taxes are different under most tax jurisdictions. See IRS Pub 901 for more details.

The tax credit is one of the kludges in the tax code to fix the above issue. If you noticed I did use the past tense – last time this was true was back in the 70s.

My argument is not anti-tax, it is about equitable treatment. Assume you have a company incorporated in Europe and has a subsidiary in America – that company would pay taxes on local profits. Now flip the scenario, a American company with a subsidiary in Europe. With a Tax Credit the US company would pay more taxes then the European company. (1-FT)*(1-TUS), where FT is the foreign tax rate and TUS is the American tax rate. Now, there are loopholes, kludges, etc, to get around even that, but still – why encourage complexity in the tax code? Why gimp Americans when they work aboard? I mean, yes, it is the reason why I have a job now – but I am sure if that complexity went away I could find something different to do – something more useful to society.

Printing metal parts has been around for a long time. Titanium metal hip replacements come to mind. There are other limitations.

No, they play games like this. (Like the “Double Dutch Sandwich”). But it would close a whole class of loopholes and make our tax system more rational.