I'd guess nearly every citizen tries to pay the least amount in taxes they possibly can.
The NYT article strikes me as disguised envy: "they make more money than us, so let's demonize them for doing something we all do: minimizing our tax burden."
How many of us in this thread can afford lobbyists to bribe lawmakers to change the law to benefit ourselves?
I agree we should not let the rich and powerful corrupt our government. I don't know your mind, but I have heard this argument before, usually by folks who consider such efforts to be government overreach. This also ignores the placement of burden in such a corrupting influence; that it is the fault of government allowing itself to be corrupted, not the "selfish striving" person/business/organization. I guess amoral sociopathic behavior is permitted behind the corporate veil and there is nothing that can or should be done about it.
[0] From Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton.
This is such a weak characterization of the argument. What are you proposing we do to sufficiently punish people who have broken no laws? You can't effectively police individuals or corporations according to unwritten rules, so write good rules and fix them when they fail. That's what can and should be done about it!
OP's point implies that it's a predictable byproduct of the system design because people consistently work to minimize their tax burden and the effort scales with their means. Wielding money to influence lawmakers seems bad, but is also a certainty in a system where your lawmakers are willing and able to legally accept it.
If you want to hold people morally responsible, why hold entities designed to maximize profits to a higher standard than lawmakers who are there to represent the interests of the people?
And if you want things to change, why fixate on moral judgements about legal behavior instead of systemic changes that yield better outcomes within the constraints of humanity's natural tendencies?
That's ok. Given the tax burden also scales with your means, I find this an acceptable equilibrium.
> "If you want to hold people morally responsible..."
I reject the premise that it's immoral to minimize your tax burden within legal boundaries. And I find this kind of techno-moralizing completely hypocritical: we all try to minimize our tax burden, whether individuals or corporations.
Either way the morality debate seems irresolvable, which is why I wish people would debate tax policy and focus on the system instead of calling people evil and hoping they consistently act against obvious incentives.
I think a lot of people (myself included) would agree on this and fail to agree on what qualifies. For example, if somebody earnestly believes they can do more good with the money than the US government, even if they're wrong, is it evil for them to try to legally influence lawmakers? I'm not sure that's evil, but I don't need that individual to be evil to believe you should reform the laws that let them do it.
It seems way easier and more productive to demonstrate that a law is failing to achieve its intended effect than it is to demonstrate that a group of people are evil so we can all be mean to them on the internet and hope it makes them stop.