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I agree that companies are incentivized to pay the least amount of taxes just as they are incentivized to optimize their operating costs in general. I don't thi

I agree that companies are incentivized to pay the least amount of taxes just as they are incentivized to optimize their operating costs in general. I don't think that this letter denies that Apple has a rational reason for avoiding taxes. And I agree that this problem is best fixed by making tax avoidance structurally impossible. Pressuring market actors to voluntarily take actions they are not incentivized to take is not a reliable solution. But, Tim Cook himself has framed Apple's tax practices in moral/ethical terms. In doing so, Tim Cook began a discussion about the moral/ethical quality of Apple's tax practices. This letter takes part in that conversation. The letter contributes to that conversation by making the very valid point that the moral quality of Apple's tax practices is very poor, according to Tim Cook's own standards. Regardless of the right solution to the problem, this was something that needed to be stated publicly and was stated well in this letter.

gt_ 9y ago
It didn’t need to stated publicly to anybody who understands that businesses (maybe most particularly modern corporations, shareholders and investment firms) act on strategies that they believe will make them the most money with the least risk. I’ve never seen anything change that, especially a blog post. The same goes for when “Tim Cook frames Apple’s business practices as moral/ethical”. You call this marketing and Tim Cook does it everywhere he goes, Congress or not, all day, every day, because he makes a lot of money for it. If this letter were run on the front page of NY Times, WaPo, Guardian every day for a week, I cannot imagine could make any discernable difference in the business practices. Occupy Wall Street, which at least for the most part had it’s finger pointed in the right direction, made no measurable impact on, well, anything. We could speculate some long-shot correlations with fringe left political movements like Bernie Sanders but these things remain certain to be ineffective so long as this letter represents the public’s understanding of the problem.

gt_ 9y ago

It didn’t need to stated publicly to anybody who understands that businesses (maybe most particularly modern corporations, shareholders and investment firms) act on strategies that they believe will make them the most money with the least risk. I’ve never seen anything change that, especially a blog post. The same goes for when “Tim Cook frames Apple’s business practices as moral/ethical”. You call this marketing and Tim Cook does it everywhere he goes, Congress or not, all day, every day, because he makes a lot of money for it. If this letter were run on the front page of NY Times, WaPo, Guardian every day for a week, I cannot imagine could make any discernable difference in the business practices. Occupy Wall Street, which at least for the most part had it’s finger pointed in the right direction, made no measurable impact on, well, anything. We could speculate some long-shot correlations with fringe left political movements like Bernie Sanders but these things remain certain to be ineffective so long as this letter represents the public’s understanding of the problem.