Tax Accountant Here - Whoever wrote the Forbes article is patently wrong. Large corporations like Apple cannot base all of their current year's estimated tax payments on their prior-year's tax liability (See Section 6655(d)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code), only their first quarter's estimated payment. Apple's 2011 Form 10-K shows that their current tax expense (the amount of cash taxes paid or payable on 2011 profits) was $5,415,000,000. They also have a deferred tax expense (taxes that have economically accrued on 2011 earnings but that aren't due until certain events occur in the future) of $2,868,000,000. Their total tax expense for 2011 was $8,283,000,000 on pre-tax profits of $34,205,000,000, an effective tax rate of 24.2%. They were able to "save" about $3.9 billion in taxes by keeping profits generated in foreign countries parked outside of the USA. Other tax savings came from utilization of the Research & Development tax credit ($167 Million) and the Domestic Production Activities Deduction ($168 Million).

"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1

Wow. It's supposed to be cloudy in Vancouver? Who woulda thought?