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Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

>Does this sort of activism really help?

Yes. It reduces the company's bottom line until they either inflict bad publicity on themselves, sit and cope with it silently, or submit to the demand to pay their lawful taxes.

>I think a more effective form of activism would be to flood representatives' offices with requests to change tax laws and to vote for candidates willing to do so.

You're getting downvoted because we've got a lot of Americans on HN. For us, that approach failed as of last night.

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> or submit to the demand to pay their lawful taxes.

They pay their lawful taxes. They engage in tax avoidance, not tax evasion.

1) Anyone who thinks this will affect Apple's bottom line is delusional. The negative effects of the publicity pales in comparison to the tax benefits.

2) Protesting your local politicians always works provided you have enough people. You're just not doing a good enough job convincing your fellow citizens. That's how you really effect change.

I couldn’t care less about downvotes. Most of the time, they are indicative of disagreement more than anything else, and I come here for discussion, not glad-handing people for meaningless votes. Furthermore, the issue of tax law/enforcement isn’t going to be solved by whining at Apple. If you don’t like the laws that offer legal loopholes for large corporations to lessen their tax burden, your lawmakers are the ones you need to be protesting, not Apple.

Actually, given that lawmakers are in effect captured by large corporations, and Apple are the largest of all, what they think about tax law actually really matters. Tim Cook has spoken out about cash repatriation several times and the debate seems to be about where the tax is paid.

If a phone is sold in France, a corporation is making money from the French market, so given that that market has fixed infrastructure costs, shouldn’t actors in that market contribute to those costs through taxation?

France does receive tax on Apple’s business in the form of sales tax, VAT, property tax, corporate tax, etc., so I’m not sure what you’re insinuating here. Can you elaborate?

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