Just because you can dump industrial waste into a river doesn't mean you should. Just because you can steal doesn't mean you should. Just because you can shortchange citizens doesn't mean you should.
Yes laws should be passed, I agree, but that doesn't mean we can't also multilaterally also go after others at the same time. Do you hold the parent responsible for the kid stealing? Yes. But you also hold the kid responsible for stealing.
Most of all, I want to get of this notion that public corporations have fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. In the Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the supreme court stated that "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes."
There is a better option, we just aren't taking it. As citizens, we should be supporting multilateral action for a more ethical capitalist economy.
Secondly, you would be surprised, there enough people who don't deduct everything possible. There are also enough people who don't take the cheapest energy, but choose a green option instead. Who don't buy the cheapest meat, but go for more expensive non-factory farm meat. Who don't take a plane, but take a train. Etc.
(Before someone starts to criticise green energy, bio meat, etc., that's not the point: people are willing to spend more for a more ethnical lifestyle. Why shouldn't we expect the same from a company that always talks about its ethical virtues?)
What is the ethical amount of tax deductions to take? All, some, or none of the ones offered by the tax law?
A few years ago a guy came to me with a scheme to reduce my tax. It took him a two-page diagram to show me how it worked. The gist of it was that participants could "work" for a few hours a week on a music project. The work consisted of providing feedback on the music of P Diddy (Puffy/Daddy/etc). Now just to provide some background, I don't know anything about music. I can't play an instrument. I don't have Diddy's cultural background. I don't listen to his music. I'm a financial coder who lives on a different continent.
Apparently as long as we could document that we'd done this work, it there would be a way to deduct some sort of loss.
I didn't take part.
There will always be legal ways to do things that are wrong, because just like the corner cases in code, there are corner cases in tax code. You can exploit them to make an exception, but you know what the point of the code is.
b) even if you could draw the line and somehow say Apple was doing something "more evil" than normal tax avoidance, what's the point in petitioning the corporation to stop doing that? A corporation is sort of a money-hungry optimization machine without a soul and the outcome you get with it depends on the environment it exists in, as a matter of mechanical logic. Would you hold a counter protest to bees because they sting people? No, that would be silly, it's just in their nature to sting people. Would you picket the Borg for trying to take over your star system? No, it's pointless to try and guilt the Borg and even more so to try to force them to change by such appeals.
Simple: brand value. Apple likes to be associated with: privacy, green, etc. If their brand gets associated with greed and tax evasion, their brand devalues (at least in Europe), possibly leading to fewer sales.
For a company that that sells with high margins, like Apple, reputation is extremely important.
Governments can and should make fair tax laws. They failed to do so, and now it’s Apple’s fault?
Why would we want to move the responsibility of setting tax rates out of the hands of government and into the hands of corporations?
2) European doctrine in accounting is not that you can do anything as long as you don’t break the rules, but that you should account in a way that reflect the truth as much as possible within the rules
3) the European doctrine of tax law is that you should tax your profit where they are made
4) your headquarter for European tax purpose is not the address in your letterhead, but where the orders tend to radiate from.
If your brand is actively associated with a controversial practice, then your sales will fall. There will be people that won't want to be seen carrying an iPhone.
[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/25/foxconn_getti...
That does not automatically mean taking advantage of tax havens. Warren Buffett says Berkshire Hathway can save tax using such tax havens but he does not do it because its not the right thing to do.
Any enterprise which does not make consistent high profits eventually gets scooped up / controlled by "activist investor" scum which then demands profit extraction to shareholders at any level possible: tax evasion schemes, loading up the company with debt which then gets distributed to shareholders or other financial tricks that only benefits the shareholders, often at expense of the workers and society.
The only other exceptions to this rule I know are Amazon, Google and the various companies of Elon Musk - which are exceptions only because of their extremely charismatic and successful leaders.
Ok, say we protest the Irish government, and they close the loophole. Next, they do the same from another country. What should we do when Apple uses another loophole?
Moreover, it raises awareness, and it is a good thing to blame publicly those society to help governments change the rules. If no one complains, why do anything?
So, Apple exploits both China and Europe to make a buck.
e.g. Apple has been ordered to pay up to €13 billion ($19 billion) in back taxes, plus interest, to Ireland [1] [2]
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/apples-headache-i...
[2] http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/appleeu-case-was-...
Hell, I even believe citizens have a civic duty not to contribute to corporations that make the nation a worse place. You are as selfish as your most sociopathic executive. You both contribute to the same bottom line, it is only compensation that is different.