Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes - Bloomberg
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Say you have created a site -- one that sells goods and services. You have written a bunch of code, and leveraged libraries and other components for the rest. Now, say, if I put certain values into the forms on your site, I get your services and goods for free or extremely reduced costs. Say that value looked something like this:
sophacles'; insert into discounts (code, percent_off) values ("sophaclesmagic", 100);
Do you consider this acceptable? Your code allowed it. It's not like I would be doing anything so crass as stealing, you can't claim I broke rules. I just did something you allowed.
Or perhaps would you try to get "your lost money" anyway, as the code that allowed it "wasn't perfect, but obviously not what you intended".
How is this not basically the same thing as the laws?
Maybe we should just make a law making it illegal to dodge your intended tax rate, just as there are laws against circumventing the intent of a computer system.
He says that as though they got nothing in return for the time / money they spent on Google.
Follow the money, or the lack thereof. Behind every one of these complaints lies, somewhere, someone who has some self-serving use for that money.
The government could choose to spend less money and avoid decreasing the tax burden on everyone else, but then the services everyone receives would decrease, and only those who don't pay as much tax would benefit. If we hold spending constant, someone who doesn't pay their fair share of taxes is increasing the tax burden on everyone else.
Paying the lowest amount of taxes required by law is certainly not evil. I wonder how much extra Mr. Briloff sends to the IRS, and I wonder how evil he considers that to be. If the law makers in the various jurisdictions didn't intend the tax code to be used in this way it's certainly in their purview to change it. Since this has not happened one can only assume that GOOG et al are acting in the manner which the law makers intended.
In my opinion persons such as Briloff who derive their income from schools which are largely publicly funded to teach people a trade which is largely only necessary because of the tax code are the people who should be paying extra because of what the tax code provides for them. (eg. their livelihoods)
If Briloff wants people to pay extra taxes perhaps he should encourage the gov't to provide services worth in excess of what they cost. Perhaps Mr. Briloff forgets that governments are instituted amongst men to secure rights and not to redistribute and destroy wealth.
Lawyering around your "intended" tax rate is no different than (black hat) hacking. It's using the rules of a system to circumvent its intent. It's pretty well accepted that (black hat) hacking is morally wrong. How is one morally wrong and the other not?
[1] http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...
Second honest question: a corporation is owned by people. People pay taxes. Why should those people have to pay taxes twice on the same money - once one it gets to google and once when it gets to them?
Reduce costs, increase profit by increasing market by dropping taxes. Companies are moving away from the states, and law is remaining stagnant for a evolving market.
To your second point: Yes, obviously corporations are owned by people. But nothing forces a corporation to pay a dividend. So if you don't tax the corporation itself, the corporation becomes a tax free investment vehicle. People would just keep everything in a corporation including investments, cash reserves, houses, cars, jets, yachts, etc.
I find Google's behavior to be sociopathic and Enron-like. While it's perfectly "legal" it is socially irresponsible. If Google wants to withhold monies because it thinks corporate expansion is better for society, it should withhold from its charitable contributions rather than its taxes. Otherwise pay your goddamn taxes. I pay mine, I don't want to pay Google's, too.