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Comment by qsymmachus | Hacker News Reader

Why do Balaji Srinivasan and his admirers seem to share so much in common with Tea Partiers? At least the small government crowd (seems) to stand on principle, rather than just angle for new ways to make money. Don't try to weasel your way out of paying taxes.

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It's interesting how your framing of the strategy by the use of the weasel metaphor seems to result in the conclusion that this is somehow inappropriate. I wonder if you would reach the same conclusion if you framed it as simply a smart way of legally reducing your tax burden by using a deep understanding of the tax code, which itself is a product of the same government that you're paying your taxes to.

That's why we draw a distinction between following the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Or, as the dude put it, "you're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole."

Apple's tax structure rightly prompted outrage, and Ireland was shamed into closing the loophole: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24542794

Let's not forget that US corporations are also obligated to maximize shareholder value. Reconciling these oftentimes conflicting edicts is hardly a trivial matter and this illustrates how black and white simplifications do not capture the underlying complexity of the issue.

"Maximizing shareholder value" is as pernicious an idea now as the day Friedman uttered it. At least post-2009 it's universally recognized as such:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-09-06/business/41816...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizi...

You have responsibilities other than making money. Paying your dues as a citizen is one of them.

Don't necessarily disagree with you about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of this idea. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company for an illustration. But, however you want to characterize the idea, it is still an unavoidable constraint on US corporations. I only bring it up to illustrate the doctrinal ambiguity that is seen in almost every part of the law.

I take your point. But what may seem ambiguous to a corporation is not at all ambiguous to most citizens – myself included – who tend to see such tax structures as an underhanded way to game the system.

To frame it in more pragmatic terms, deploying these tax structures may hurt a company more than it helps due to the opprobrium they attract. Of course it's difficult to quantify the effects of bad press. But not all decisions should boil down to a cost-benefit analysis – what's wrong is wrong.

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