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Comment by JonFish85 | Hacker News Reader

Are you saying that a company moving money around in an advantageous way is immoral? How so? Presumably you deduct the maximum amount you can from your taxes. That's what the business is doing: shuffling it's money around in a way that minimizes their costs.

Sure, I can see the argument of people who don't really like it, but to say it's immoral seems a bridge too far for me.

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"Minimizes their costs" can also be read as "minimizes their contributions back to the society they're benefiting greatly from", hence the ethical concerns.

That's his point though. Can't you say the same thing about you hiring a tax accountant (or hell, TurboTax) to get you the deductions that you're eligible for?

I think the companies would argue (not necessarily myself, for the record) that they do contribute to society via high-paying jobs, collecting payroll & sales taxes and income taxes. According to [1], Apple paid roughly $14.2b in 2012 income taxes, and according to [2], they paid $1 out of every $40 collected (using Apple numbers, although I'd imagine other companies are similar).

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/...

[2] http://www.imore.com/apple-already-pays-1-out-every-40-tax-d...

> via high-paying jobs, collecting payroll & sales taxes and income taxes.

In other words, doing what's absolutely necessary and expedient in order to make profit and not flagrantly disregarding certain portions of tax law?

And in the case of tech companies such as Apple, the "high paying jobs" bit comes with an extra bit of irony since they were doing the exact opposite to a criminal extent.

Color me unimpressed.

Median Apple salary is ~$110k[1]. Sure, there was the lawsuit about colluding to depress salaries, but according to [2], the median personal income of a person with a bachelor's degree or more is $56k. That's essentially double.

[1] http://www.salarylist.com/company/Apple-Salary.htm [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

Wow. Are you really claiming Apple gets moral high ground for its salaries even after criminal collusion to keep them low?

As Apple's aptly demonstrated, it doesn't pay those salaries for any other reason than that it must, and even then it will break the law to pay less.

Finally, most US Apple employees are located in California, where cost of living is substantially higher than most of the country. There's far less disparity in your figure when taking cost of living & the common academic pedigree of Apple's employees into account.

> "minimizes their contributions back to the society they're benefiting greatly from"

Or it could be that society is greatly benefiting from them: the people and companies that make the goods and services.

There could be ten thousand other companies or just individuals who bring significant benefits to society, but who are forced to pay more in tax to make up the deficit from big corps avoiding it. It doesn't add up - you can't measure the benefit a corp has to society.

Of course there's the counter argument that corps can be a drag on society - for example, it's pretty clear that pesticides are causing significant problems for bee populations, yet the costs aren't paid by the big corps producing those (cough Monsanto). The big corps don't pay for their drag on society unless they're doing something illegal or due to negligence, in which case they usually pay a fine, which is a pittance, and still won't cover the overall losses society has. Banks are another example - does society really gain shit by bailing them out? Shouldn't they in fact, be paying way more - the same tax gambling establishments pay.

> for example, it's pretty clear that pesticides are causing significant problems for bee populations

You are attempting to refute what was said by replacing it with a different argument. What you are touching on is what should happen as a result of theft and/or damage to property. I was pointing out that OPs original statement could be equally valid when reversed.

Because you're shifting that burden onto somebody else.

If you're a company that primarily does business in the US, you're benefiting from access to all of those customers and a friendly business legal infrastructure. You should be paying tax for that privilege. If you want to move out of the US and lose all of that, I don't have a problem of that, but what Mark Cuban is talking about is different.

Multi-billion dollar product and finance companies move to the Cayman Islands or Ireland or elsewhere and do virtually no business there. It's purely to shed tax liability.

It's not much different than banks and lenders who choose to incorporate in places like South Dakota or on Native American reservations where there are lax/no usury laws so they can charge absurd interest rates (the latter of which 50-100% are common) that have been voted illegal in the places where they actually have their customers.

It's immoral as it gets. I used to work in Finance and those companies justify it as ethical because "everyone else is doing it". It's bullshit, they just don't want to be the nail that sticks out...

There's a big difference between the government asking you what deductions you qualify for - those are intended under the law - and a corporation making convoluted corporate structures to avoid paying the intended amount of tax. Generally, double irish sandwiches and the like don't pass the smell test.

If the convoluted corporate structures are legal then they are paying the intended amount of tax because they are following the law. It may not pass the smell test but they are legal. The complaint needs to be placed upon the laws and those write them, not the companies who abide by the law.

Just because a law exploit is possible doesn't mean it's acceptable to exploit it en masse. Yes, the law writers should fix their laws, as browser writers should fix holes in their browsers, but that in no way gives the exploiter a free pass.

I think you continue to misunderstand my point. It is not an "exploit" if it is the law. It is simply the law.

Your comparison to exploiting browser security holes doesn't even come close to being a proper analogy.

It's very immoral to benefit from the utilities, roads, emergency services, etc provided for by tax money and work very hard to not contribute.

Think starting a business is hard? Try starting a business without any infrastructure.

What's worse is that companies like Walmart get cities and towns to build infra to new Walmart locations and funnel lots of the money away from the areas that provide the infra.

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer if the gov't didn't start enforcing "morality".

There's a difference between immoral and irrational.

It is rational for a company to maximize their returns for shareholders and to skip taxes wherever legally possible.

Morality is relative, but if you went simply by utilitarian ethics, then a company would be acting irrational by maximizing the amount of good it provides.

There is crossover between rationality and ethical behavior for companies (especially B-Corps). A good case would be plastic water bottles. It's good that they are using thinner plastic lids now, and is rational because it cuts costs, but non-biodegradable water bottles are a huge filler for landfills, and probably are not maximizing the good.

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