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Comment by crusso | Hacker News Reader

they finally pay for part of what they owe

You only owe the taxes that the law compels you to pay. There's no obligation whatsoever to pay a dime more.

Do you personally look to pay the maximum amount of taxes that you could possibly justify through various readings of the tax code? Because I guarantee that your tax software or your tax accountant are not "taking advantage" of opportunities for you to pay more unless you look to.

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No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary in Ireland that owns my intellectual property and pays me dividends for my freelance work. To pretend that they didn't go above and beyond to avoid paying taxes is lunacy.

Maybe not, but I bought an electric car because I got $12k in tax credits from state and federal.

If the law allowed me to set up a company facade so that I could keep more of the money that I earn, I'd do so in a heartbeat.

> No but I also don't set up a pretend subsidiary...

do you pay your state government the sales tax you owe it for all of your online purchases?

At least here in Canada, sellers are legally obligated to remit sales taxes, even if they do not explicitly collect them. The buyer does not need to do anything.

I made this mistake when I first starting selling online, which stung. Setting up a tax ID in Canada was very easy. Now that I am selling in the US, I am just beginning to explore the issue, and it is notably less easy.

So if you "get away" with not paying sales tax online, it is likely that the sales tax was simply baked into the price.

this does not reflect the situation in the US, where krebby appears to be located. (i checked first.)

here's a little page from washington state on it, which matches my understanding of the situation in most other states: https://dor.wa.gov/get-form-or-publication/publications-subj...

> Have you ever made a retail purchase and the invoice didn’t include retail sales tax? This may occasionally occur, especially if you purchase items over the internet or from out-of-state vendors. ... However, the buyer has a responsibility to pay use tax to the Department of Revenue even if the seller doesn’t collect it.

> Also, an invoice should never have a single figure that “includes retail sales tax.” If you receive such an invoice, contact the vendor and ask for a new invoice with the retail sales tax separately stated. Washington law requires that customer sales slips, contracts, invoices or other sales documents separately state the amount of retail sales tax due.

Oh very good. The "let's say you did something bad therefore the bad that you accuse someone else of doing isn't bad"

If there is a poorer argument against wrongdoing than this I don't know it.

That would take more work to pay more taxes. Apple did work (setting up a subsidiary) to avoid paying taxes.

I set up my 401k. That was work. I've also done the mega-backdoor Roth IRA last year, and will do it again this year. Am I a bad man?

Courts have ruled in favor of the mega-backdoor Roth IRA as a legitimate intended use of the tax code.

That kind of comment is called 'whataboutism'.

If it cost $5 and took less than 10 minutes to set up, would you?

For apple, the effort is worth the benefit. For you, it may not be.

This is probably because your business is too small. I’d youbwere making 10s or 100s of millions of dollars in annual profits you would have a pretend subsidiary by now.

Apple has done nothing illegal. If you don’t like it, you can complain about the tax laws, that’s what is bothering you.

Are you reporting the sales tax that you owe on your inter-state internet purchases?

Did apple actually do that? Do you have a source for Apple licensing tech from Ireland?

They did since the 80s and continue to do so for all their European revenues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

A huge part of their $250B stash have never been taxed at all.

Apple Operations International (AOI) and the "double Irish with a Dutch sandwich":

http://fortune.com/2013/05/20/meet-aoi-apples-mysterious-iri...

You also don't have shareholders to answer to.

If your spouse asks you do something ethically dubious (like enter into a tax avoidance scheme), does that make it OK?

you aren't accurately describing this situation with your analogy.

I would argue that legal obligations are different than moral obligations. You may not agree that wealthy corporations have no moral obligation to pay higher taxes, but I would say that not having a legal obligation to take some action is not the same as having no obligations period.

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