Hacker News Reader

Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

Morals are irrelevant in this story.

Tax law is a system of rules. There should be no second arbitrary standard people (and companies) should be expected to follow.

View on HN

Ah yes, because laws are totally independent of morals. I'm clearly being facetious. Laws are the manifestation of morals, either collective or of highly influential individuals.

But, to your point, laws are the non-arbitrary manifestation of those morals. Indeed there should be no unwritten standard as well. In this case, there wasn't: the Irish laws did not comply with EU law, and EU law take precedence in this matter. Apple should have known that was a possibility, and probably did know but hoped (and lobbied) for the best.

Morals are very relevant when deciding what's right and what's wrong. In this particular case, I fully support the European Commission. Note that there are laws against setting up artificial corporate structures with the sole purpose of circumventing taxes, and that's exactly what Apple did (with the help of the Irish tax bureau). The only problematic thing here is that Apple is being made an example of. There are many other companies that are doing the same. But it makes sense to handle the largest cases first.

How a country chooses to tax, and where and on who the tax burden falls, is a political matter, and thus has a moral dimension.

This is not true. There's always the spirit of the law and this is checked by a group of people with that power, the juries.

>Morals are irrelevant in this story.

ah, the capitalist angle. unfortunately, the consequences of acting this way are poor for the rest of society.

Change the laws to suit the morals most have.

I wish I could, unfortunately I have no power or money, while multinationals have armies of lobbyists and bags of money a la Scrooge McDuck to help write the laws to suit them.

Why not?

Rigid adherence to rules without consideration of what's going on doesn't usually end up with a better place.

You seem to be advocating that those in positions of power shouldn't have to adhere to the rules. That doesn't usually end up with a better place.

That's obviously not what the parent post meant and you know it

Actually, it's not obvious at all. The parent is suggesting that the EU should not adhere tax law as written and should instead attempt to impose it's morality.

I'm advocating that Apple bone up and pay taxes, even if there's a way out.

They do pay taxes. You are advocating that they should pay taxes that they don't owe because an EU bureaucrat wants to increase the power of the EU against the sovereignty of the individual states, in this case Ireland.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com