6 ms·
What if the taxes are unethical?
by mrschwabe 10y ago
What if the taxes are unethical?
- andrewprock 10y agoThat's like asking "what if profits are unethical?"
- mrschwabe 10y agoWhy would profits be unethical?
- bobwaycott 10y agoProfits would be unethical if they were derived from unethical business practices. This isn't difficult to imagine.
- mrschwabe 10y agoOkay fair point. Though I don't necessarily see the correlation to taxation. I assume what perhaps is being implied is that the money from taxation can be used for ethical or unethical practices (as oldmanjay points out). Yet that analogy skips how tax is only possible with profit, not to mention the fundamental issue of whether or not taxation of profit is ethical in the first place.
- bobwaycott 10y agoWell, your original question was in response to an assertion that a corporation has an ethical responsibility to its society. You asked what if the taxes are unethical, which strikes me as a bit silly at best. I only offered a suggestion to your second question of why certain profits would be considered unethical. The matter of the choices made by leaders who spend tax revenue is independent of levying, paying, and collecting taxes. If you have an argument that describes how taxing profits is unethical in contemporary society, as they are legislated by elected representatives, I'm sure there are others beside me who'd love to read it.
- jedmeyers 10y agoThen taxes is not the way to remove those profits from the company.
- bobwaycott 10y agoThat wasn't the question I was answering.
- spdy 10y agoHow can a tax be in this category?
- oldmanjay 10y agoThere are many ways a tax can be unethical. It may finance torture, invasion, and fomenting coups in undeveloped nations that lead to widespread suffering. For example.
- bobwaycott 10y agoThat is not an ethical problem with the tax, but with the choices made by leadership on policies and budgets.
- hueving 10y agoSure it is. Taxes can be levied for very specific purposes. Even ignoring that category of taxes, if you find that a whole country is operating immorally, then funding that company is immoral.
- spdy 10y agoBut this is not the context we are talking about here. Spain is part of the EU and the so called "1st" world.
- lostlogin 10y agoTo reply to a comment I can't reply to: spdy 7 minutes ago But this is not the context we are talking about here. Spain is part of the EU and the so called "1st" world. I'm not sure if you're being tongue in cheek or not, but the 1st world may have less repression and human rights violations but it doesn't have none. And member states have invaded other countries in recent memory, have been involved in torture, institutional racism, etc.
- bobwaycott 10y agoFYI: you can reply to any comment by clicking on the n [minutes/hours/days] ago link.
- kafkaesq 10y agoWhat if the taxes are unethical? Doesn't matter -- when the principals signed documents agreeing to incorporate, they simultaneously agreed to abide by the what the law says in regard to paying taxes due as the law requires. If they thought these laws were "unethical"... well, that was their chance to make a principled stand against them.