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Comment by tomkwok | Hacker News Reader

This post[0] in the Dropbox forum points out that Dropbox is suspected of the intention to minimize tax payable.

[0]: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/communities/public/questions...

Remember "tax minimization" is legal, prudent, and a fundamental duty of company officers in these times of "maximise shareholder value" being the primary and legally mandated goal of a corporation.

"Tax evasion" is crossing over a not very well defined and continually shifting line - and is illegal.

At the moment, at least from where I see the world here in Australia, all the "global tech giants" (and mining/resource ones too) are doing a significantly better job of navigating the shifting tax rules across various national tax jurisdictions to minimize their tax obligations - than the governments and bureaucracies are doing of collecting "fair" taxes from them. Our local popular press is full of stories of FaceBook/Google/Apple paying zero tax in Australia because they can structure their invoicing/payments to and from different parts of the same global corporate entity – in entirely legal ways that result in zero tax owing in Australia.

I'd think less of Dropbox's senior management and advisor team if they weren't trying to take advantage of the same loopholes.

It's "Modern Corporation 101" grade stuff - "Maximise shareholder value by whatever means won't put the company directors in jail. Don't talk about ethics or fairness or duty to society (except in the Marketing Department and advertising). Talk about duty to shareholders and what's close enough to technically legal that our lawyers will sign off on it."

You're exactly right. While we look at this stuff as despicable, because it really is, we can't blame the companies. Except ... we can, right? They're the ones who have manipulated the tax codes, right? They're practically writing the laws, right? Ultimately though, the politicians are the ones who are passing the laws. They're the ones who are being bribed, excuse me, funded, by corporations and the wealthy. To blame corporations for taking every advantage of the system, to manipulate it in whatever way possible, is silly. Capitalism rewards innovation. It rewards plugging the holes that cost money (and taxes can be quite a big hole). These can be great benefits to everyone to some extent, but they also eventually lead to buying out competitors which reduces competition, which can result in big, lazy companies who'd rather legislate than innovate - I'm looking at you, Cable Company and Telephone Company, or the Media conglomerates. That's what we have the world over.

Maybe it's just me, but for me, the problem is our political system - it's not designed to withstand these corrupting forces. Some countries deal with it slightly better, but barely just.

I like competitive capitalism. I like democracy, and even the idea of a representative democracy. But they don't play well together when you have the capitalists ultimately deciding who gets to represent the people, and then those representatives bending in every which way to make things easier for their funders. When you have a system that rewards bribery, or has in its place a revolving door between legislators and business, you're going to have these effects. The solution to this I think is really rather simple, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Why is tax minimization despicable? Countries should compete on all levels including economic efficiencies. Lower taxes is higher efficiency and an admirable achievement for a government.

What is despicable is that we all pay more taxes than our governments should actually need if they spent the money they took from us wisely.

Countries don't just compete on taxes by providing the same service more efficiently, but also by providing a _worse_ service to their citizens. It's a race to the bottom.

Perhaps it's worthwhile to have a mild counterbalance to the tendency to spend an ever increasing amount of other people's money.

It's not like "better service" is a driving force behind any government, ever.

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