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Comment by eagsalazar | Hacker News Reader

Why do you say that? The CEO and CFO work for and are judged by the board and whatever standards they care to use. The board in turn is free to make decisions independent of shareholder financial interests. There is nothing intrisically true about your statement about CEO/CFO only optimizing for maximum financial gain.

The real issue is that most people think they are legally bound to always make the optimal financial move even if that means being immoral or unethical. Even worse is that many people think that doing so has a certain morality of its own, which IMO is completely, bizarro, nuts.

http://www.directorship.com/stout-shareholders-as-owners/ http://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism/ar...

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what is immoral or unethical in paying less taxes? The corporate and personal tax rates in Germany and Belgium are higher than the US. Are Germans or Belgians more moral or ethical than Americans?

Apple pays billions in taxes, will pay billions in dividends to shareholders (which goes to retirement/pension funds, universities, charities, etc.), employs thousands (the employees pay taxes), donates to charity, etc. They created an Apple ecosystem that spurred thousands of developers and start-ups to build apps, etc. which in turn created more jobs, taxes, etc.

Are those not ethical or moral to you?

I'd absolutely argue that it's immoral to take advantage of loopholes that break the clear intended amount of taxation that society asks of you. If a society decides it wants to levy less tax, that's rather different (and fair enough).

Equally, I think it's fairly naive to expect corporations to be moral, since there's very little incentive for them to be so - I merely respect those that are more.

s/loophole/tax law

s/society/government

morality is not defined by how much taxes you pay the government.

who's immoral?

The company that pays less taxes and returns the money to the shareholders,creates jobs, donates to charity, etc. or big government that waste tax payers money by spending it on useless government programs and wars?

If you can't tell the difference between a loophole and the intent of a law, I don't really know what to say.

Government is part of (and, indeed, defined by) society. I can only imagine that your views on the uselessness of government programs are shaped by the US' admittedly poor example, but that doesn't mean that governments are inherently incapable.

> The corporate and personal tax rates in Germany and Belgium are higher than the US

I don't think that's currently true, at least not if you're talking about the top rates that profitable companies pay. Wikipedia says the top corporate tax rate in Belgium is 33.99% and the top federal corporate rate in the US is 38%.

Corporate tax rates have generally declined over time to where the US rate is now one of the highest in the developed world. (Japan beats us by a bit - their top rate is 40%. Most of Europe does not.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

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