You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.
Seriously by not clicking the right boxes I could have agreed to pay an extra $42 in add-ons/services for a $15 ticket that had its own $6 in fees added.
If all the mistakes go the company's way, then, at best, the company is working much harder at avoiding mistakes that hurt themselves than they are at getting it right.
This goes for credit card companies and many other firms.
Lesson: not everything which can be implemented should. And elegant solutions to unethical problems are still ugly.
However tax evasion and avoidance are often confused, for a public company not avoiding taxes would most certainly be an ethical violation.
>You are allowed to use any opening in the law to save on taxes, but not lie.
The other side of that is:
If you (as a C(ETF)O of a company) do not use every opening in the law to save on taxes you may be violating a fiduciary duty to your shareholders.
Also, depending on the company "a few million dollars" isn't even a meaningful amount of money.
Yes, in theory it's their fiduciary duty to minimize taxes, but I've never heard of a board being sued because they didn't squeeze every last dollar out of their tax bill.
1: http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/20...
Again, has anyone every sued a company to demand that they try harder to lower their tax bill or move operations overseas?
Some companies even brag about NOT outsourcing. Socially conscious marketing.
Perhaps this is related to the fact that I wasn't responding to your comment?
>Some companies even brag about NOT outsourcing. Socially conscious marketing.
And?
However, obviously there's always potential risks and costs involved in outsourcing that need to be taken into account when evaluating such decisions.
This would also presumably require that the leadership be informed of the obviously better course of action.
Maybe not what you want, but in 2008, the CEO of KBS, South Korea's public broadcasting corporation, was fired by the government for having agreed to court settlement in dispute with National Tax Service over how much tax KBS should pay.
Yes, he was fired because he had followed the settlement suggested by the freaking court. (The real reason was that he was a liberal appointed by the previous president Roh, and the new government led by conservative Lee Myung-Bak wanted him gone.)
Years later the court ruled that the firing was unlawful (duh), but somehow he wasn't reinstated, and anyways, the damage was done.
The tax loopholes that companies like Apple tax advantage of are another thing entirely.
No, the significant ones (i.e. offshore subsidiaries) are very much codified.
This is very black and white.
This is just not true.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-58.pdf
https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Guidance-for-Examiners-and-Ma...
Just look up "sham transaction" for plenty more. It's a very well established concept and doctrine. Nobody should be splitting hairs about avoiding vs. evading taxes, or generally pontificating about fiduciary duty, without understanding it.
>Actions that are deemed to have been taken solely for their tax effects are clearly and explicitly deemed tax evasion by the IRS
What you said would make almost all tax avoidance into tax evasion. Hell, even claiming deductions would by your logic be tax evasion.
Based on my reading there certainly exists such a duty when it's beneficial, obviously tax avoidance isn't explicitly beneficial though. Potential law changes or even bad press could cost more than the amount of money saved.
tax avoidance=/=tax evasion
(In the future you might want to do that before accusing others of such)
I think you mean tax avoidance, which is quite a different matter. While there's a lot of debate on the matter, in the United States at least, the general rule of thumb was laid down in 1934, and is as follows.
> Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes -- Judge Learned Hand