Apple Taps Covid Shopping Boom for Record Tax Haul in Hometown

Apple Inc.‘s share of local taxes collected by its hometown from e-commerce sales reached new records last year in the midst of a recession, thanks to the boom in pandemic-induced online shopping.

Cupertino’s most recent payments to Apple—totaling $5.7 million for the second and third quarters of 2020—increase the total amount paid to the company to $80 million since the original deal was negotiated in 1997, when Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy.

The record haul shows how the sales-tax sharing agreements that Cupertino and a handful of other California cities struck with e-commerce giants before the pandemic ...