Comment by Thorncorona | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thorncorona | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Taking advantage of others (such as lobbying for loopholes) falls under the umbrella.

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.

So do you voluntarily pay more taxes than you are legally obligated to? Purposely fail to take deductions etc? Hopefully you’re walking the walk since you’re saying things like this.

The problem is that you can only make use of loopholes if you are large enough. You need foreign entities, an army of lawyers, etc. Consequently, rich companies can use loopholes, but the smaller local companies that they are competing with cannot use the same loopholes.

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?)

The green energy comparison is not apt because there isn't an ethical amount of taxes to pay. With green energy you are trying to minimize non renewable consumption.

What is the ethical amount of tax deductions to take? All, some, or none of the ones offered by the tax law?

Do you participate in every tax minimisation scheme you are presented with?

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.

You can pay more tax strictly required. But by doing so, you allow competitors with more creative accountants to get a leg up. Markets select for efficient companies, and companies that make large chartible contributions to the government will be undercut and replaced by less ethical companies.

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?

Why shouldn't you avoid paying taxes? If it's legal and you get to make more money, I don't see the issue. Especially if you're using that money to make more positive change than the government could.

Fine if you don't use roads or the internet or anything else which was funded from tax payers money.

But I don't lose the benefit by not paying taxes. Plus those are only tiny percentages, which could easily be afforded from only 1% of your current tax rate.

a) what everyone else said, it's impossible to draw the line between what ordinary people do in all tax paying nations, i.e. look with a keen eye at all the possible deductions and tax incentives available to them in order to minimize how much they pay, and what huge corporations like Apple do which is essentially the same but with a multitude more laws and lawyers.

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.

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.

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.

It's not tax evasion if they are following the law.

If you can do something lawful (which the most emotional if your examples are not) to increase your profits, it is your duty to your shareholders to do so.

Read my full comment please.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com