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Comment by Kristine1975 | Hacker News Reader

Kristine1975

>altruism

Then why does Apple avoid paying taxes?

Let's not kid ourselves: Apple is a company, and companies are only "altruistic" if they expect that it will help their bottom line.

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Billings Learned Hand once said:

> 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.

If we want companies to pay more taxes (which I think we do want) we should change the laws. You can't blame anybody for only paying the legally required amount of taxes.

>You can't blame anybody for only paying the legally required amount of taxes.

Of course I can (and I do). Apple and various other companies go to great lengths to pay the least amount of taxes they can get away with.

Why would anyone - individual or corporation - pay more taxes than they are legally obligated to pay?

Don't get me wrong: I believe that corporations should be obligated to pay much more in taxes than most currently do, but I'm going to assume that you don't knowingly pay more in taxes than you owe. If I'm wrong about that, then I'm interested in hearing your reasoning as to why you feel like the government is entitled to money to which they have explicitly stated that you aren't required to pay if you meet certain conditions.

> Why would anyone - individual or corporation - pay more taxes than they are legally obligated to pay?

Because they can't afford the accountants and lawyers required to pull of the funneling of funds through various bodies and countries to get said reduction in tax burden?

I do agree that the only worthwhile effort is to change the laws. It's fundamentally wrong to have a system which favor those who can afford and have the resources to do such cynical tax planning. Just really fd up regardless of any political position. But hey, as long as all that corporate money is put into the political system, nothing will change.

This is dogmatism. The FBI situation clearly demonstrates that Apple does not only act in the interest of the bottom line.

>The FBI situation clearly demonstrates that Apple does not only act in the interest of the bottom line.

I don't think it does as I've explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959074

I agree with you. They're not altruistic at all and the FBI thing was likely a PR campaign. They already have a number of behaviors that hurt users, app developers, and people in the supply chain. Far as security, the hardware engineers know there were attacks all the way through the stack that can be mitigated with certain tech that would probably cost them a few million or tens of million one-time development. They used a weak, 3rd-party approach instead. They never brought up these weaknesses, which all commercial smartphones have, during the debate. They still don't.

So, let's recap. Tim Cook, already hit due to privacy issue, might have a personal stake in improving privacy in tech. They knew their products weren't secure. I knew third parties that could've cracked it as they cracked IC's designed for security w/ obfuscation & tamper-resistance. As I predicted, the FBI ended up finding a group that cracked it for a low, six digits. That means the attack was easy with much of that probably profit.

That Apple knowingly leaves their devices insecure despite having money and incentive to knock out low-hanging fruit means all this talk is mostly branding. They're just differentiating themselves with appearance of greater security/privacy. Like they did when they said Mac's were immune to malware back in the day. Except this time, they actually deliver a good chunk of what they claim at least. I'll give them that. :)

This completely ignores the potential financial downsides of multiple vectors of consequences in the FBI case. For example:

- non-technical (i.e. most) people interpreting the situation as "Apple protects terrorists"

- provoking the creation of legislation that would impose backdoor requirements on their software

- potentially extreme financial consequences if the court were to take a hard-line pro-FBI stance (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws...)

Again, the refusal to admit that it is possible for a company to behave altruistically in the face of clear evidence is simply dogmatism.

I'm not rejecting that the act itself might have been altruistic. It may have been. I've merely suggested it might not be, that there's no proof it is except incidentally, and certainly doesn't support them being altruistic as a company. The evidence I offer is all the selfish or abusive practices they do at various levels for maximizing their bottom line. That's for them not being altruistic. Far as acts appearing altruistic, image management and public relations are huge, money-making fields. The reason is that big companies often do something altruistic (or seemingly so) to get people to buy their stuff. Apple has a history of doing that, including with fake security ("Macs can't get viruses!"), to get people to buy their stuff. Given that history & insecurity of their phones, it's right to question whether them championing secure, private phones is a move to create or continue demand for their products given main competition is backed by a surveillance-oriented company. Clear differentiator available that might make them billions.

So, your claim is that a company with many selfish, damaging behaviors fought a legal battle over a case whose consequences might cost or make their shareholders billions depending on outcome and press. That... is consistent with rational, corporate self-interest. Their position also had social value to many & maybe the CEO even paused to do the greater good. That's dogma or speculation at this point given they usually don't focus on public benefit plus are still misleading people about their security & privacy for profit that continues to be hoarded also with few or no investments benefiting the public.

Apple's not altruistic: they're a company that schemed and sued their way into billions in profits. Taking a privacy stance might make them billions more. Or maybe they're just a good citizen on one topic on a few occasions. I'm leaning toward the former but still glad their self-interest and the publics' aligned with them following through on it. All I'm saying on this topic.

It would have cost apple time and money to do what the FBI requested. This wasn't simply 'send us a file', they asked them to make a custom version of the software.

And if they did it, the FBI would have made more future requests for apple to spend time and money.

And if the custom software somehow got out into the wild, that would threaten apple's bottom line as well.

The FBI situation was just another example of apple taking care of themselves.

Let's not forget that in the US your shareholders can sue you, if they think you are not acting in their best interest.

Let's also remember that this is basically a myth, judges give wide latitude to management, and every company ever has (often consciously) acted against their self-interest.

Because there's no reason to do that.

They need and are investing in other countries besides USA. Their mapping sucks completely in Europe.

Apple does not do anything. Apple is not a person. Person do things. In this case, Tim Cook deciding "hey let's start paying a lot more taxes" will probably not be received very well by the shareholders.

> Then why does Apple avoid paying taxes?

Because they're a publicly traded company who act in the best financial interests of their shareholders. They're not breaking any laws. They're playing the game by following the rules as best they can while maximizing their profits. Any for-profit company that does not do so is suicidal.

If you think what they do is wrong - campaign to fix the laws they are following.

So they are not altruistic. That was all I was saying with my rhetorical question.

Being profit-seeking and altruistic to their users are not mutually exclusive.

Your unstated assumption is deeply troubling.

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