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These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being ab

by loceng 9y ago

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

tyingq 9y ago
They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?
- m12k 9y ago
  Agreed, the only sane solution to this is a massive overhaul of international tax law. Shaming companies just isn't a scalable solution in any way. There's a massive opposition against this both from multinationals and tax haven countries though - this article is a good way to start making it obvious to normal citizens that this issue should be on the ballot.
  - jcion 9y ago
    It's tough when the "only sane solution" also happens to be a enormous task to even begin talking about. I agree with you, but I also struggling to imagine a time when that overhaul could take place.
    - m12k 9y ago
      I agree, it's a massive undertaking and getting support for something like that is really, really hard. The way I see it, all of that anti-globalism rage that is currently being directed toward foreigners really ought to be directed toward fixing this, since this would actually help (e.g. have more money for a wellfare system to handle unemployment from outsourcing and automation). But unfortunately it's much easier directing rage toward 'weird people with other skin tones and religion' than something abstract like a broken international tax system.
  - rectang 9y ago
    The tax haven countries should be subjected to overwhelming, crushing sanctions. They deserve to be international pariahs.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      What is a "tax haven" country? You realise that the USA has states that act as significant tax havens in some situations, do you? Is Ireland a "tax haven" because it has low corp tax rates? The EU certainly thinks so but the Irish disagree.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    That simply won't work if there's even one country (like the known tax haven islands) that don't abide by it. Unless international tax laws start charging taxes for every penny that crosses a border, things like that will keep happening. There's a huge financial incentive for small countries to become tax havens, they take a relatively tiny amount of money, which for them multiplies their GDP.
    - improbable22 9y ago
      But will people travel to this tax haven to buy their computers? Will Apple's employees all move there to write software? Nope. What we mean by Apple operating in (say) Germany is these things: they make sales there, and they have employees there. Where the letterhead says they're incorporated... isn't this just an implementation detail? It's like asking where their datacenter is located. It's in the cloud, who cares? It seems to me that making the tax laws care about this is crazy... why do we this? Why not simply tax the things which cannot move, transactions involving real people who live in particular places?
      - valuearb 9y ago
        apple already pays huge amounts of taxes to germany. It just doesn’t pay large amounts of a specific tax called “income tax” because it isn’t based in Germany.
        improbable22 9y ago
        But "income tax" is a misleading name for this. It's a tax on corporate profits. The letter wants you to compare this rate to _your_ rate of income tax and be shocked. But this is stupid, the corporation is not a human being. For those profits to be enjoyed by anyone, they have to be paid out again as salary, or dividend, or recovered by selling shares... and these transactions are all taxed. And, of course, all of this money which is now profit was taxed when whoever bought the computer was charged VAT. (Who signs the check to the tax man on each of these transactions is irrelevant, but another common way to mislead people for outrage. The tax man stands between you and Apple and demands VAT... and between Apple and their employee and demands income tax... how this is collected is, again, an implementation detail.)
  - Yizahi 9y ago
    But overhaul can't happen like "now". It need some initial impulse, an outrage bigger than average etc. Apple case may help this.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      That's a good point. I'm not dismissing the PR and awareness value of raging about Apple. Just hoping that the fix isn't perceived as "going after apple". Going after existing law, tax havens, etc, is more productive.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        You mean unproductive and counterproductive.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Eliminating corporate income taxes would be the best way to start, given it would benefit society immensely.
    - jamesblonde 9y ago
      How would it benefit society? Reduced state income that could be used to invest in infrastructure and people? Will the companies invest that money with society's interest at best better than the govt would? I don't think so. What do Apple do with their money? They horde it, waiting for a windfall to bring it back to the States and pay low/no corporate tax on the repatriated profits.
      - improbable22 9y ago
        It would benefit society because we could all spend our outrage on things more productive than pushing on a rope. The profits were taxed as VAT or something on the way into Apple. They will be taxed again as income tax or something on their way out again. We are free to adjust these rates as we wish. But trying to tax intermediate steps which seem to be largely accounting fictions (like exactly which puzzle piece of the global empire actually made that profit) seems like a fool's errand.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        You tax things you want less of, not more if. Taxing corporate profits is a tax on investment. Apples actual income tax rate is in excess of 60% if they repatriate. First, they have to pay corporate income taxes in all their foreign countries. Then, they owe 9% to state of California on what’s left. Then they owe 35% to the US treasury on what’s left. Then they pay the remainder as dividends, and shareholders owe up to 10% to their stars, and then 15-20% to the federal government. We could likely generate as much or more in tax revenues by eliminating the corporate income tax and treating individual dividend payments as regular income (taxed at 28-38% normally). This way reinvested profits aren’t taxed, leading to more investment, which leads to more profits and more dividends. And the return on investing for individuals increases, leading to more investment. More investment means more jobs, higher productivity and higher pay. And hundreds of thousands of corporate tax accountants can now actually be switched to work that benefits society.
- chris_t 9y ago
  This is the key point that is so often missed. Getting angry at Apple et al for following their incentives rationally is silly. I'd love to see journalists doing a better job of explaining the failures of the tax system rather than peddling pointless outrage, but I suppose that they too are following their incentives rationally; outrage gets more clicks.
  - dontreact 9y ago
    It's not silly. It's the first step in a long chain of events that hopefully will end up with a better tax code. Giving companies that do this bad PR incentivizes companies towards reporting loopholes instead of exploiting them. Journalists already do try and explain the failures of the tax system. For example, check out this graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Double-Irish-With-A-Dutch-Sandwich.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl... The tax code is complicated and boring and people would much rather read articles with outrage directed specifically at companies. Should I say that you're silly for getting angry at journalists for following their incentives rationally?
    - chris_t 9y ago
      I agree that I'm being a little silly, it's what my last line hinted at! I do think outrage is better directed at our legislators than at corporations though, but I don't hold out hope for substantive change either way.
      - dontreact 9y ago
        I don't think outrage is better directed at legislators until there is some consensus on what would be changes to the tax code that would help alleviate this problem. I think we're a couple of steps from that and I see no reason why we shouldn't get angry at the large companies until they help us with that step. After all: they are the experts on loopholes and tax evasion!
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    Being angry at Apple can turn it into a value to behave "nice" If consumers decide to buy products of companies which don't play such tricks then we get the free market way of changing the behavior of those companies (... while it's unlikely to really have impact as along as everybody does it and consumers want cheap products)
- Clanan 9y ago
  The fix can certainly involve appealing to morals and human responsibility. A company is, after all, just a group of people. This should be a very strong tactic considering how liberal Silicon Valley is. The major players preach constantly about progressive ideals, yet fail to do more than the minimum when push comes to shove. My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it.
  - billmalarky 9y ago
    "My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it." I suspect that you and your partner have significantly more control over your enterprise than the officer of a public company does though. If you didn't your investors wouldn't suck it up, they would do as they see fit, which may be agree with your position or may be replace you. Public companies are controlled by their share price more than they like to admit. Even if you are like Zuck and maintain complete management control of your public company, if that share price takes a huge hit it becomes very hard to attract and maintain talent/future investment/etc. Everyone has some authority to answer to.
    - arca_vorago 9y ago
      Which is why I think the current scheme of publicly traded companies at base is flawed. Earlier this week someone posted something along the lines of, once you become public your product is stock, not whatever you produce. I think we ought to use the power of the executive to straight up revoke charters to businesses that are American that engage in these schemes. Something I learned about while reading about the British and Dutch east India companies.
    - amag 9y ago
      > if that share price takes a huge hit it becomes very hard to attract and maintain talent/future investment/etc. OTOH, by paying taxes you make sure there is a talent pool to recruit from in the future.
- PedroBatista 9y ago
  Laws are written by people ( sadly by lawyers paid by these companies in this case ), just change the laws. And by trying to do this we'll see creatures come out of the woodwork and previously virtue signaling personalities going strangely MIA.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    One does not simply change the laws, just like you're indicating. You need a majority vote in a government or international thing to change laws, and those are easily influenced if you have more money than the GDP of many countries. Actually that makes me wonder when we'll see the first companies starting their own countries.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Corporate income taxes are already too high, it’s better for society if they were zero.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale? Legislation doesn't do anything if actors don't see a moral responsibility to abide by it. Case in point: There are laws against murder but murder still happens. Does that mean we need better laws in regards to murder? Imho it rather means that some parts of society still have a "moral debt" in recognizing the value of human life. Same pretty much applies to paying taxes. For some people it's something they do out of a sense of responsibility to the society they live in, to others it's an unfair burden they need to evade at all costs. And because the latter behavior isn't even that criminalized, there are large sectors of society where nobody feels a moral responsibility to pay taxes. Heck in many of these circles people actually boast about how much taxes they evaded/how much money they got out of the government. In that regard, there might be quite a cultural angle to this whole issue.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. One that's probably more relatable is itemized deductions for US taxpayers. I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. Do people take advantage of that and deduct the costs for ridiculous mansions? Sure. Shaming them for it is silly. If that exemption isn't fair, then put a cap on it.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      > That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't always the only solution. And with something as abstract as "taxation" I think it's usually a rather bad approach because new regulations will only result in new loopholes being created, it's an endless cat&mouse game wasting a lot of resources for everybody involved. That's why I mentioned that "moral debt". Across the whole world there exists lots of behavior that's technically not "illegal", but still frowned upon by large parts of societies, tax evasion rates among them. Imho if you want people to follow the "rules of society", and not use every chance they get to circumvent financial legislation (which is what a lot of tax evasion effectively boils down to), then you first need to convince them that paying taxes isn't just a burden to them but also of use to them. > I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. If that's an easy and obvious process, open and evident to everybody who'd it be relevant to, then that's a-okay. Sadly that often ain't the case which is in large parts the result of the above-mentioned cat&mouse game. I realize that my whole point might come across naive in a kinda "if people were just good we wouldn't need laws" way, but that's not at all my intention. I just think there's a real cultural rift here in terms of how seriously some people take their responsibilities towards the society they are living in, historically that's never been something you could fix through "legislation".
- billmalarky 9y ago
  Furthermore, the nature of competition means "moral" companies, moral defined loosely here as those who pay more taxes than legally required, are at a disadvantage to "immoral" companies who pay the legal minimum. It's a prisoner's dilemma for executives that really do want to do right by their communities. The solution is to fix the tax code problem. If the moral "rules" don't apply to _everyone_ then they are worthless.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    it’s immoral for corporations to pay extra taxes. Those profits aren’t theirs, they belong to shareholders.
- DomreiRoam 9y ago
  I think they are often engaged in illegal activities but it is difficult to prove it. A company and its subsidiaries are different entities and when you do an IP transfer between them where a huge set of patent and trademark is exchanged for 1 euros and then used back for millions, one of the company has been wronged. Try to do the same shenanigan with a LTD and yourself and you will very fast see what the IRS (or equivalent) think of it. A company is just a legal construction but we let people transgress the legal constrains that should rule its behavior.
  - improbable22 9y ago
    Maybe the problem is in trying at all to tax something you can't pin down, like this IP transfer between (say) Apple Germany and Apple US. I mean what should its value be? Clearly Apple Germany is nothing at all like an independent company importing phones from China to sell. Much of what they sell is the software, the image, the brand... these things don't have open-market prices. So who gets to decide what their price is? Apple's accountant? Some bureaucrat? The much simpler solution is not to bother taxing these things you can't see. Why don't we set the corporate profit tax to zero, and then this whole argument goes away. Tax is collected every time they sell a computer in Germany. Tax is collected every time they employ someone. Tax is collected every time someone sells shares and profits. These seem like good things to tax, as they involve actual people and take place unambiguously in particular countries. If you'd like to collect more tax, then by all means adjust the rates.
    - johannes1234321 9y ago
      This would mean that immaterial things won't have a worth in the book keeping way and can't be billed. In simple terms what happens is that Apple Europe, Inc. has to pay a lot for the license to use the Apple logo and trademark to Apple Paradise, Inc. Thus Apple Europe, Inc. doesn't have profits, while Apple Paradise, Inc. has all the profits. Now the value of the logo and trademark are artificial ... What's needed are international agreements how to handle those licenses, that you can't simply push them to tax heavens, but tax has to be paid where they are created or used or whatever.
- Yizahi 9y ago
  They don't break a letter of the law (probably), but they break spirit of the law. Laws do not exist like a puzzle challenge to be beaten by clever lawyers with a reward being factual exemption from the law. They are usually intended for everyone.
  - ptaipale 9y ago
    Most of the criticism (of Nike and Apple, for instance) isn't for breaking even the spirit of the law. Most often the companies are acting precisely as the law is intended to work, and criticism is based on a misunderstanding of what is turnover and what is profit, and how taxes should be calculated. Very commonly the complaint is that Nike (for instance) pays no corporate income tax to a country even though it sells a lot of goods there. This is a misunderstanding: the vehicle for collecting sales-based taxes is VAT, not corporate income tax. Corporate income tax is paid where the company operates. A major thing people don't seem to understand is that within EU, it is perfectly OK for a company operating in one EU country to sell goods and services to another country. Free movement of goods and capital. The very foundation of EU which infuriates people.
    - germanier 9y ago
      It's perfectly OK if that company actually operates in that country. It is not OK if the only presence they have is a mailbox and the actual act of operation is done somewhere else. A taxation race to the bottom is not what the fundamental principles of the EU are about. At best they are an unwanted side-effect.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        No you are missing the point of the EU. No company should be forced to base in a country to sell there. Apple pays huge amounts of taxes in Germany despite not being based there. It just doesn’t pay much “income tax” because it’s not based there.
        bwindels 9y ago
- adamc 9y ago
  Corporations aren't people (dumb legal decisions to the contrary). "Shaming" doesn't really work for corporations. The solution would have to be tighter tax codes. But our congress is highly dependent on campaign contributions, and corporations (and the individuals they make rich) can contribute. The result is that the tax code tends to be skewed in various ways. If we don't solve campaign financing, other problems are probably hopeless.
- batushka 9y ago
  The more laws available - the easier it is to find a loophole or create a scheme for evasion. Look at tons of tax lawyers and firms thriving on difficult and ever growing laws. Full tax rate is only for loosers who can't hire tax evasion lawyers. The only way froward is to cut regulation - to be understandable and as equally applied as possible.
- bashonomore 9y ago
  There are large companies which do take a moral stance on this and pay taxes as normal, so it is certainly a valid strategy. An example is bet365 in the UK who (according to the little knowledge I have, I used to work there) don't engage in tax avoidance schemes. The irony is that a gambling company takes a moral stance on tax whereas these big Silicon Valley companies who try to portray a liberal image are the most aggressive tax dodgers.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  > They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. OK, but that doesn't really matter. Legality and morality diverge further the higher up you go in scale. There was a thread on here a month ago about how, at the size of the Moon, solids don't behave like solids anymore. They behave more like fluids. The Moon wouldn't shatter into bits if you "broke" it, it would just stick together. It is a good analogy for law: the bigger you go, the more malleable and "un-law like" it is. It becomes a fluid. Multinationals can bend law. They can influence it. Law bends around their gravitational pull. (edit: I think you meant your comment slightly differently to what I interpreted, I'll leave it up.)
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  > They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. There are many cases where legal != moral, an that's the very point of the article.
- HacklesRaised 9y ago
  It's obviously comedy but the sentiment remains valid, Bill Burr's response to "That's what the law says" 50 years ago the law said I could beat you with a mtop handle, didn't make it right.
- mcguire 9y ago
  And if the laws aren't favorable enough, they can have the laws changed.
- jchrome 9y ago
  The more interesting fact is that if Tim Cook were to pay more taxes, he'd be fired by his shareholders. CEO's of public companies are supposed to increase profitability, not decrease it.
- SaltyBackendGuy 9y ago
  It's too bad we can't legislate morality. As long as politics is in bed with corporate interests the bigger bank roll wins. Legality != Morality
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- awj 9y ago
  > The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. A public corporation doesn't have morals. It isn't a thing that thinks and feels, it's a social construct designed single-mindedly around the creation and accumulation of wealth. You cannot shame one of these companies. You can enforce the law against them, or you can expose them to such bad PR that they change their ways. The only "morals" internal to a corporation are their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We either need to fundamentally change the nature of corporations, or accept this and adjust our laws to compensate for immoral agents.
- hennsen 9y ago
  I don’t necessarily believe it will work to beg them to show fairer behavior. But then, the issue that many businesses and corporations don’t consider fairness and moral as factor in their decisions and behavior is an urgent one. I think it’s a big problem that leaders of a company might even be sued by shareholders for taking a morally good decision (as long as the other option is just bad in terms if moral, but still legal) that leads to even a slight loss in financial gain for the company and shareholders. This goes for such tax avoiding schemes but also for any other decision with effects on society and nature. Being fair and sustainable in society, social and environmental aspects simply is not a goal for any company that way.
- apendleton 9y ago
  You're acting like laws are an unmoving fundamental property of the universe. In reality these very companies have reshaped the laws to their own advantage. Companies that lobby on tax policy demonstrably pay lower taxes; see e.g., https://sunlightfoundation.com/2012/04/16/lobby-more-pay-less-in-taxes/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2012/04/16/lobby-more-pay-les...
  - liberte82 9y ago
    Watch Chomsky's Requiem for an American Dream if you want a great analysis of the cyclical nature of corporate power being further and further entrenched as they gain more power to write the laws that benefit them.
    - ttoinou 9y ago
      Chomsky's solution? Moar state !
      - fny 9y ago
        You inevitably need more state to combat antitrust.
      - culturalzero 9y ago
        Of course, because he's so find of power structures in general. *Queue eye rolling
        Y_Y 9y ago
        You seem to be overly fond of data structures! ("Cue", rather than "queue")
      - 32hkwejr 9y ago
        AKA Control of the society that is... 1) Openly documented 2) Viewable by all 3) Accountable to the people not the highest bidder Exactly as the Founding Fathers wrote and spoke of it? They were pre-capitalist, saw the origins of capitalist philosophy beginning, and wrote of their fears about where that will lead a country of free people; straight into the back pockets of the elite (remember the crown was essentially the same way, owned/controlled all, required the masses to entertain them and provide value for THEM). You seem convinced contributing to your government is a scam, and you should go shovel whatever for some rich wanker. You got something else to add? Or are you going to just regurgitate the banal fear mongering of the last 200 years?
- tamrix 9y ago
  I bet you're one of them.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Small business owner. Less than 7 figures of revenue.
- fossuser 9y ago
  I think this issue is hard to fix without a United Human Government. This is an incentive and coordination problem and global companies take advantage of it. To really fix you'd have to have all countries coordinate on tax law which makes this a really hard problem to solve in our current world especially when a lot of companies with a lot of money are able to push for legislation that's in their best short-term interest, but not necessarily the best interest of the group. Outside of that you get what we have currently which is a stable equilibrium of governments trying to write laws to create the incentives they want and companies hiring armies of accountants to avoid paying taxes (as well as pushing for legislation changes that benefit themselves). http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage." They and their cronies write the laws. Where governments aren't amazingly corrupt and can just bribed outright, corporations spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to get favorable legislation, and corporate exec and government official positions are revolving doors where the one goes to work for the other all the time and the one serves the interests of the other. When government officials retire they regularly get cushy, high paying jobs at the very companies they favored while in office. They also regularly invest in the very companies their laws and policies favor. Not to mention that high government positions and corporate executive positions are both staffed by the wealthy who look after the interests of the wealthy: to stay wealthy and become even wealthier. As Alan Moore observed recently, "while in the West after many years of arduous struggle we are now allowed to elect women, non-white people and even, surely at least in theory, people of openly alternative sexualities, I am relatively certain that we will never be allowed to elect a man or woman of any race or persuasion who is poor."[1] [1] - https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-interview/ https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-...
- specialist 9y ago
  Legal and yet unfair. Shaming worked pushing dolphin safe fishing practices, for example. Laws just codify society's morals. Sometimes by leading, mostly by lagging behind social norms.
- skybrian 9y ago
  We can certainly blame companies for using loopholes secretly, rather than doing it openly, pointing out the problem, and working to get the loopholes fixed. If the company position is that the right fix is to plug the loopholes then by all means be consistent about it.
- throw2016 9y ago
  Its not an accident that these loop holes exist. And companies like Deloitte and Pricewaterhouse are happy to consult companies and help them save taxes. Some of these accounting and financial advisory companies are also large campaign contributers with revolving doors with relevant government departments. There is an inevitability about it, but many are either on koolaid or demonstrate an intentional naivete.
repomies691 9y ago
So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whether it pays taxes or not.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
  Think about it this way, if I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes. They hurt innovation. And that money is supposed to go to governments to use, which it doesn't, hampering the ability for others to thrive. Now there's is less competition
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Apple is the biggest taxpayer in the world. It pays every bit of tax it owes. It should be taxed less, not more. Corporate income taxes are corrosive to maintaining our society.
    - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
      I'm not going to argue whether or not it pays all the taxes it owes. I'm pointing out that if they have access to offshore accounts that most businesses can't, they gain an unfair advantage over those other businesses. If you want to remove corporate income taxes, it should happen at the same time, not selectively to larger corporations.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        They don't "have access to offshore accounts that most businesses don't". They naturally earn most of their profits internationally, and pay taxes to the countries they earn those profits in. If they return those international profits to the US, they'll lose another 40%+ to taxes (closer to 60% if you count individual dividend taxes). So they keep the remaining profits in the lowest tax country/location they can find while it earns interest. They owe Germany nothing more.
nickpp 9y ago
How exactly are they inflicting all that harm, hardship and suffering? In my eyes, they are creating tremendous value every day while following every single law nations impose on them. They would risk everything otherwise. You're throwing demagogic, populist accusations without a single shred of support. Is emotional discourse an acceptable replacement for the rational one?
- ehllo 9y ago
  Maybe this video from the HMRC.gov.uk helps you to understand why evading tax is bad and it is better for all to pay the full tax ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_VwZ-Cmac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_VwZ-Cmac
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Apple pays the full tax. It pays huge amounts of taxes in Germany.
    - ehllo 9y ago
      ... apple clearly evades tax in all markets in europe http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-3702_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-3702_en.htm
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Apple needs to keep it's international after tax profits out of the US or it will be forced to pay another 40%+ in taxes on them. So it puts them in Ireland, because Ireland gave it a great tax rate, less than 1%. What should the tax rate be on the interest from billions in savings? Apple isn't' forcing Ireland to build roads or spend any government moneys to allow it to make Irish bank deposits. it's a completely legal arrangement for both Ireland and Apple. It's crap like this that forced the UK out of the EU. Nothing the EU does is going to force Apple to move it's savings to Germany or France so they can impose high taxes on their interest. That cash will go to Asia first.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Freeloaders.
josejuanisaac 9y ago
“They are doing it too” is legally a valid excuse. The way legal disputes get settled usually is based on the outcome of precedent legal cases and how they relate to the current case. Your moral outrage (and the outrage caused by paradise papers type reports) is just a failure to see the world for what it is. An ant can complain all day about the size of the mammoth, complain that it’s unfair that it’s got a fur coat or that it’s one step is equivalent to hundreds of ant steps, but this won’t change reality. This is how success works: if you do it for so long and in such a way comparable to Apple, you are able to have more leg room than other ants. My only criticism of Apple is that do portray themselves as very humble engineers that love designing beautiful products. Engineers who have any experience designing software and hardware products have a deep admiration for Apple as an organization, specifically because we know exactly how much work goes into a working product, moreso because Apple’s products, even though they are not perfect, show a high level of resiliency both in the market and in our day to day lives. Admitting thus that at least some of the people and companies that hide their money in tax havens made their money in a legitimite way (we’ll get into this later), don’t you think they are entitled to try to save as much of it as they can? The author of the piece makes reference to the mostly public educational system which implies Apple has some social reaponsibility to give back to it’s country. How about the high salaries that Apple pays to its engineers? Isn’t this enough to show that they value craftmanship?
- lovich 9y ago
  Oh well, guess we should stop all attempts at improving society guys. Apple can do it, so they should do it, and we should stop discussing the matter. Like goddammit man, the moral outrage is not there because people fail to see the world the way it is. It's there precisely _because_ people can see the way it is now and it's fucked up. And paying it's engineers a high salary is enough of a payback to society? Did that cover the roads they ship their goods on? The international Navy that protects their supply lines from overseas factories? The education system which produced their engineers? All the other inputs they rely on and externalities they offload? No it didn't, because once you get rich you get your own set of rules. Paying back what you owe is for the proles
- jamesblonde 9y ago
hota_mazi 9y ago
Just a nitpick but they are not "evading" taxes, which would be illegal. The correct term would be "tax avoidance", which is legal (albeit ethically questionable).

by loceng 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

m12k 9y ago
Agreed, the only sane solution to this is a massive overhaul of international tax law. Shaming companies just isn't a scalable solution in any way. There's a massive opposition against this both from multinationals and tax haven countries though - this article is a good way to start making it obvious to normal citizens that this issue should be on the ballot.
- jcion 9y ago
  It's tough when the "only sane solution" also happens to be a enormous task to even begin talking about. I agree with you, but I also struggling to imagine a time when that overhaul could take place.
  - m12k 9y ago
    I agree, it's a massive undertaking and getting support for something like that is really, really hard. The way I see it, all of that anti-globalism rage that is currently being directed toward foreigners really ought to be directed toward fixing this, since this would actually help (e.g. have more money for a wellfare system to handle unemployment from outsourcing and automation). But unfortunately it's much easier directing rage toward 'weird people with other skin tones and religion' than something abstract like a broken international tax system.
- rectang 9y ago
  The tax haven countries should be subjected to overwhelming, crushing sanctions. They deserve to be international pariahs.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    What is a "tax haven" country? You realise that the USA has states that act as significant tax havens in some situations, do you? Is Ireland a "tax haven" because it has low corp tax rates? The EU certainly thinks so but the Irish disagree.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  That simply won't work if there's even one country (like the known tax haven islands) that don't abide by it. Unless international tax laws start charging taxes for every penny that crosses a border, things like that will keep happening. There's a huge financial incentive for small countries to become tax havens, they take a relatively tiny amount of money, which for them multiplies their GDP.
  - improbable22 9y ago
    But will people travel to this tax haven to buy their computers? Will Apple's employees all move there to write software? Nope. What we mean by Apple operating in (say) Germany is these things: they make sales there, and they have employees there. Where the letterhead says they're incorporated... isn't this just an implementation detail? It's like asking where their datacenter is located. It's in the cloud, who cares? It seems to me that making the tax laws care about this is crazy... why do we this? Why not simply tax the things which cannot move, transactions involving real people who live in particular places?
    - valuearb 9y ago
      apple already pays huge amounts of taxes to germany. It just doesn’t pay large amounts of a specific tax called “income tax” because it isn’t based in Germany.
      - improbable22 9y ago
        But "income tax" is a misleading name for this. It's a tax on corporate profits. The letter wants you to compare this rate to _your_ rate of income tax and be shocked. But this is stupid, the corporation is not a human being. For those profits to be enjoyed by anyone, they have to be paid out again as salary, or dividend, or recovered by selling shares... and these transactions are all taxed. And, of course, all of this money which is now profit was taxed when whoever bought the computer was charged VAT. (Who signs the check to the tax man on each of these transactions is irrelevant, but another common way to mislead people for outrage. The tax man stands between you and Apple and demands VAT... and between Apple and their employee and demands income tax... how this is collected is, again, an implementation detail.)
- Yizahi 9y ago
  But overhaul can't happen like "now". It need some initial impulse, an outrage bigger than average etc. Apple case may help this.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That's a good point. I'm not dismissing the PR and awareness value of raging about Apple. Just hoping that the fix isn't perceived as "going after apple". Going after existing law, tax havens, etc, is more productive.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      You mean unproductive and counterproductive.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Eliminating corporate income taxes would be the best way to start, given it would benefit society immensely.
  - jamesblonde 9y ago
    How would it benefit society? Reduced state income that could be used to invest in infrastructure and people? Will the companies invest that money with society's interest at best better than the govt would? I don't think so. What do Apple do with their money? They horde it, waiting for a windfall to bring it back to the States and pay low/no corporate tax on the repatriated profits.
    - improbable22 9y ago
      It would benefit society because we could all spend our outrage on things more productive than pushing on a rope. The profits were taxed as VAT or something on the way into Apple. They will be taxed again as income tax or something on their way out again. We are free to adjust these rates as we wish. But trying to tax intermediate steps which seem to be largely accounting fictions (like exactly which puzzle piece of the global empire actually made that profit) seems like a fool's errand.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      You tax things you want less of, not more if. Taxing corporate profits is a tax on investment. Apples actual income tax rate is in excess of 60% if they repatriate. First, they have to pay corporate income taxes in all their foreign countries. Then, they owe 9% to state of California on what’s left. Then they owe 35% to the US treasury on what’s left. Then they pay the remainder as dividends, and shareholders owe up to 10% to their stars, and then 15-20% to the federal government. We could likely generate as much or more in tax revenues by eliminating the corporate income tax and treating individual dividend payments as regular income (taxed at 28-38% normally). This way reinvested profits aren’t taxed, leading to more investment, which leads to more profits and more dividends. And the return on investing for individuals increases, leading to more investment. More investment means more jobs, higher productivity and higher pay. And hundreds of thousands of corporate tax accountants can now actually be switched to work that benefits society.
chris_t 9y ago
This is the key point that is so often missed. Getting angry at Apple et al for following their incentives rationally is silly. I'd love to see journalists doing a better job of explaining the failures of the tax system rather than peddling pointless outrage, but I suppose that they too are following their incentives rationally; outrage gets more clicks.
- dontreact 9y ago
  It's not silly. It's the first step in a long chain of events that hopefully will end up with a better tax code. Giving companies that do this bad PR incentivizes companies towards reporting loopholes instead of exploiting them. Journalists already do try and explain the failures of the tax system. For example, check out this graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Double-Irish-With-A-Dutch-Sandwich.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl... The tax code is complicated and boring and people would much rather read articles with outrage directed specifically at companies. Should I say that you're silly for getting angry at journalists for following their incentives rationally?
  - chris_t 9y ago
    I agree that I'm being a little silly, it's what my last line hinted at! I do think outrage is better directed at our legislators than at corporations though, but I don't hold out hope for substantive change either way.
    - dontreact 9y ago
      I don't think outrage is better directed at legislators until there is some consensus on what would be changes to the tax code that would help alleviate this problem. I think we're a couple of steps from that and I see no reason why we shouldn't get angry at the large companies until they help us with that step. After all: they are the experts on loopholes and tax evasion!
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  Being angry at Apple can turn it into a value to behave "nice" If consumers decide to buy products of companies which don't play such tricks then we get the free market way of changing the behavior of those companies (... while it's unlikely to really have impact as along as everybody does it and consumers want cheap products)
Clanan 9y ago
The fix can certainly involve appealing to morals and human responsibility. A company is, after all, just a group of people. This should be a very strong tactic considering how liberal Silicon Valley is. The major players preach constantly about progressive ideals, yet fail to do more than the minimum when push comes to shove. My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it.
- billmalarky 9y ago
  "My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it." I suspect that you and your partner have significantly more control over your enterprise than the officer of a public company does though. If you didn't your investors wouldn't suck it up, they would do as they see fit, which may be agree with your position or may be replace you. Public companies are controlled by their share price more than they like to admit. Even if you are like Zuck and maintain complete management control of your public company, if that share price takes a huge hit it becomes very hard to attract and maintain talent/future investment/etc. Everyone has some authority to answer to.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Which is why I think the current scheme of publicly traded companies at base is flawed. Earlier this week someone posted something along the lines of, once you become public your product is stock, not whatever you produce. I think we ought to use the power of the executive to straight up revoke charters to businesses that are American that engage in these schemes. Something I learned about while reading about the British and Dutch east India companies.
  - amag 9y ago
    > if that share price takes a huge hit it becomes very hard to attract and maintain talent/future investment/etc. OTOH, by paying taxes you make sure there is a talent pool to recruit from in the future.
PedroBatista 9y ago
Laws are written by people ( sadly by lawyers paid by these companies in this case ), just change the laws. And by trying to do this we'll see creatures come out of the woodwork and previously virtue signaling personalities going strangely MIA.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  One does not simply change the laws, just like you're indicating. You need a majority vote in a government or international thing to change laws, and those are easily influenced if you have more money than the GDP of many countries. Actually that makes me wonder when we'll see the first companies starting their own countries.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- valuearb 9y ago
  Corporate income taxes are already too high, it’s better for society if they were zero.
freeflight 9y ago
> Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale? Legislation doesn't do anything if actors don't see a moral responsibility to abide by it. Case in point: There are laws against murder but murder still happens. Does that mean we need better laws in regards to murder? Imho it rather means that some parts of society still have a "moral debt" in recognizing the value of human life. Same pretty much applies to paying taxes. For some people it's something they do out of a sense of responsibility to the society they live in, to others it's an unfair burden they need to evade at all costs. And because the latter behavior isn't even that criminalized, there are large sectors of society where nobody feels a moral responsibility to pay taxes. Heck in many of these circles people actually boast about how much taxes they evaded/how much money they got out of the government. In that regard, there might be quite a cultural angle to this whole issue.
- tyingq 9y ago
  That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. One that's probably more relatable is itemized deductions for US taxpayers. I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. Do people take advantage of that and deduct the costs for ridiculous mansions? Sure. Shaming them for it is silly. If that exemption isn't fair, then put a cap on it.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    > That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't always the only solution. And with something as abstract as "taxation" I think it's usually a rather bad approach because new regulations will only result in new loopholes being created, it's an endless cat&mouse game wasting a lot of resources for everybody involved. That's why I mentioned that "moral debt". Across the whole world there exists lots of behavior that's technically not "illegal", but still frowned upon by large parts of societies, tax evasion rates among them. Imho if you want people to follow the "rules of society", and not use every chance they get to circumvent financial legislation (which is what a lot of tax evasion effectively boils down to), then you first need to convince them that paying taxes isn't just a burden to them but also of use to them. > I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. If that's an easy and obvious process, open and evident to everybody who'd it be relevant to, then that's a-okay. Sadly that often ain't the case which is in large parts the result of the above-mentioned cat&mouse game. I realize that my whole point might come across naive in a kinda "if people were just good we wouldn't need laws" way, but that's not at all my intention. I just think there's a real cultural rift here in terms of how seriously some people take their responsibilities towards the society they are living in, historically that's never been something you could fix through "legislation".
billmalarky 9y ago
Furthermore, the nature of competition means "moral" companies, moral defined loosely here as those who pay more taxes than legally required, are at a disadvantage to "immoral" companies who pay the legal minimum. It's a prisoner's dilemma for executives that really do want to do right by their communities. The solution is to fix the tax code problem. If the moral "rules" don't apply to _everyone_ then they are worthless.
- valuearb 9y ago
  it’s immoral for corporations to pay extra taxes. Those profits aren’t theirs, they belong to shareholders.
DomreiRoam 9y ago
I think they are often engaged in illegal activities but it is difficult to prove it. A company and its subsidiaries are different entities and when you do an IP transfer between them where a huge set of patent and trademark is exchanged for 1 euros and then used back for millions, one of the company has been wronged. Try to do the same shenanigan with a LTD and yourself and you will very fast see what the IRS (or equivalent) think of it. A company is just a legal construction but we let people transgress the legal constrains that should rule its behavior.
- improbable22 9y ago
  Maybe the problem is in trying at all to tax something you can't pin down, like this IP transfer between (say) Apple Germany and Apple US. I mean what should its value be? Clearly Apple Germany is nothing at all like an independent company importing phones from China to sell. Much of what they sell is the software, the image, the brand... these things don't have open-market prices. So who gets to decide what their price is? Apple's accountant? Some bureaucrat? The much simpler solution is not to bother taxing these things you can't see. Why don't we set the corporate profit tax to zero, and then this whole argument goes away. Tax is collected every time they sell a computer in Germany. Tax is collected every time they employ someone. Tax is collected every time someone sells shares and profits. These seem like good things to tax, as they involve actual people and take place unambiguously in particular countries. If you'd like to collect more tax, then by all means adjust the rates.
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    This would mean that immaterial things won't have a worth in the book keeping way and can't be billed. In simple terms what happens is that Apple Europe, Inc. has to pay a lot for the license to use the Apple logo and trademark to Apple Paradise, Inc. Thus Apple Europe, Inc. doesn't have profits, while Apple Paradise, Inc. has all the profits. Now the value of the logo and trademark are artificial ... What's needed are international agreements how to handle those licenses, that you can't simply push them to tax heavens, but tax has to be paid where they are created or used or whatever.
Yizahi 9y ago
They don't break a letter of the law (probably), but they break spirit of the law. Laws do not exist like a puzzle challenge to be beaten by clever lawyers with a reward being factual exemption from the law. They are usually intended for everyone.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  Most of the criticism (of Nike and Apple, for instance) isn't for breaking even the spirit of the law. Most often the companies are acting precisely as the law is intended to work, and criticism is based on a misunderstanding of what is turnover and what is profit, and how taxes should be calculated. Very commonly the complaint is that Nike (for instance) pays no corporate income tax to a country even though it sells a lot of goods there. This is a misunderstanding: the vehicle for collecting sales-based taxes is VAT, not corporate income tax. Corporate income tax is paid where the company operates. A major thing people don't seem to understand is that within EU, it is perfectly OK for a company operating in one EU country to sell goods and services to another country. Free movement of goods and capital. The very foundation of EU which infuriates people.
  - germanier 9y ago
    It's perfectly OK if that company actually operates in that country. It is not OK if the only presence they have is a mailbox and the actual act of operation is done somewhere else. A taxation race to the bottom is not what the fundamental principles of the EU are about. At best they are an unwanted side-effect.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      No you are missing the point of the EU. No company should be forced to base in a country to sell there. Apple pays huge amounts of taxes in Germany despite not being based there. It just doesn’t pay much “income tax” because it’s not based there.
      - bwindels 9y ago
adamc 9y ago
Corporations aren't people (dumb legal decisions to the contrary). "Shaming" doesn't really work for corporations. The solution would have to be tighter tax codes. But our congress is highly dependent on campaign contributions, and corporations (and the individuals they make rich) can contribute. The result is that the tax code tends to be skewed in various ways. If we don't solve campaign financing, other problems are probably hopeless.
batushka 9y ago
The more laws available - the easier it is to find a loophole or create a scheme for evasion. Look at tons of tax lawyers and firms thriving on difficult and ever growing laws. Full tax rate is only for loosers who can't hire tax evasion lawyers. The only way froward is to cut regulation - to be understandable and as equally applied as possible.
bashonomore 9y ago
There are large companies which do take a moral stance on this and pay taxes as normal, so it is certainly a valid strategy. An example is bet365 in the UK who (according to the little knowledge I have, I used to work there) don't engage in tax avoidance schemes. The irony is that a gambling company takes a moral stance on tax whereas these big Silicon Valley companies who try to portray a liberal image are the most aggressive tax dodgers.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
> They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. OK, but that doesn't really matter. Legality and morality diverge further the higher up you go in scale. There was a thread on here a month ago about how, at the size of the Moon, solids don't behave like solids anymore. They behave more like fluids. The Moon wouldn't shatter into bits if you "broke" it, it would just stick together. It is a good analogy for law: the bigger you go, the more malleable and "un-law like" it is. It becomes a fluid. Multinationals can bend law. They can influence it. Law bends around their gravitational pull. (edit: I think you meant your comment slightly differently to what I interpreted, I'll leave it up.)
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
> They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. There are many cases where legal != moral, an that's the very point of the article.
HacklesRaised 9y ago
It's obviously comedy but the sentiment remains valid, Bill Burr's response to "That's what the law says" 50 years ago the law said I could beat you with a mtop handle, didn't make it right.
mcguire 9y ago
And if the laws aren't favorable enough, they can have the laws changed.
jchrome 9y ago
The more interesting fact is that if Tim Cook were to pay more taxes, he'd be fired by his shareholders. CEO's of public companies are supposed to increase profitability, not decrease it.
SaltyBackendGuy 9y ago
It's too bad we can't legislate morality. As long as politics is in bed with corporate interests the bigger bank roll wins. Legality != Morality
deleted 9y ago
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awj 9y ago
> The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. A public corporation doesn't have morals. It isn't a thing that thinks and feels, it's a social construct designed single-mindedly around the creation and accumulation of wealth. You cannot shame one of these companies. You can enforce the law against them, or you can expose them to such bad PR that they change their ways. The only "morals" internal to a corporation are their fiduciary duty to shareholders. We either need to fundamentally change the nature of corporations, or accept this and adjust our laws to compensate for immoral agents.
hennsen 9y ago
I don’t necessarily believe it will work to beg them to show fairer behavior. But then, the issue that many businesses and corporations don’t consider fairness and moral as factor in their decisions and behavior is an urgent one. I think it’s a big problem that leaders of a company might even be sued by shareholders for taking a morally good decision (as long as the other option is just bad in terms if moral, but still legal) that leads to even a slight loss in financial gain for the company and shareholders. This goes for such tax avoiding schemes but also for any other decision with effects on society and nature. Being fair and sustainable in society, social and environmental aspects simply is not a goal for any company that way.
apendleton 9y ago
You're acting like laws are an unmoving fundamental property of the universe. In reality these very companies have reshaped the laws to their own advantage. Companies that lobby on tax policy demonstrably pay lower taxes; see e.g., https://sunlightfoundation.com/2012/04/16/lobby-more-pay-less-in-taxes/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2012/04/16/lobby-more-pay-les...
- liberte82 9y ago
  Watch Chomsky's Requiem for an American Dream if you want a great analysis of the cyclical nature of corporate power being further and further entrenched as they gain more power to write the laws that benefit them.
  - ttoinou 9y ago
    Chomsky's solution? Moar state !
    - fny 9y ago
      You inevitably need more state to combat antitrust.
    - culturalzero 9y ago
      Of course, because he's so find of power structures in general. *Queue eye rolling
      - Y_Y 9y ago
        You seem to be overly fond of data structures! ("Cue", rather than "queue")
    - 32hkwejr 9y ago
      AKA Control of the society that is... 1) Openly documented 2) Viewable by all 3) Accountable to the people not the highest bidder Exactly as the Founding Fathers wrote and spoke of it? They were pre-capitalist, saw the origins of capitalist philosophy beginning, and wrote of their fears about where that will lead a country of free people; straight into the back pockets of the elite (remember the crown was essentially the same way, owned/controlled all, required the masses to entertain them and provide value for THEM). You seem convinced contributing to your government is a scam, and you should go shovel whatever for some rich wanker. You got something else to add? Or are you going to just regurgitate the banal fear mongering of the last 200 years?
tamrix 9y ago
I bet you're one of them.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Small business owner. Less than 7 figures of revenue.
fossuser 9y ago
I think this issue is hard to fix without a United Human Government. This is an incentive and coordination problem and global companies take advantage of it. To really fix you'd have to have all countries coordinate on tax law which makes this a really hard problem to solve in our current world especially when a lot of companies with a lot of money are able to push for legislation that's in their best short-term interest, but not necessarily the best interest of the group. Outside of that you get what we have currently which is a stable equilibrium of governments trying to write laws to create the incentives they want and companies hiring armies of accountants to avoid paying taxes (as well as pushing for legislation changes that benefit themselves). http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
pmoriarty 9y ago
"They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage." They and their cronies write the laws. Where governments aren't amazingly corrupt and can just bribed outright, corporations spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to get favorable legislation, and corporate exec and government official positions are revolving doors where the one goes to work for the other all the time and the one serves the interests of the other. When government officials retire they regularly get cushy, high paying jobs at the very companies they favored while in office. They also regularly invest in the very companies their laws and policies favor. Not to mention that high government positions and corporate executive positions are both staffed by the wealthy who look after the interests of the wealthy: to stay wealthy and become even wealthier. As Alan Moore observed recently, "while in the West after many years of arduous struggle we are now allowed to elect women, non-white people and even, surely at least in theory, people of openly alternative sexualities, I am relatively certain that we will never be allowed to elect a man or woman of any race or persuasion who is poor."[1] [1] - https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-interview/ https://slovobooks.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/last-alan-moore-...
specialist 9y ago
Legal and yet unfair. Shaming worked pushing dolphin safe fishing practices, for example. Laws just codify society's morals. Sometimes by leading, mostly by lagging behind social norms.
skybrian 9y ago
We can certainly blame companies for using loopholes secretly, rather than doing it openly, pointing out the problem, and working to get the loopholes fixed. If the company position is that the right fix is to plug the loopholes then by all means be consistent about it.
throw2016 9y ago
Its not an accident that these loop holes exist. And companies like Deloitte and Pricewaterhouse are happy to consult companies and help them save taxes. Some of these accounting and financial advisory companies are also large campaign contributers with revolving doors with relevant government departments. There is an inevitability about it, but many are either on koolaid or demonstrate an intentional naivete.

repomies691 9y ago

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whether it pays taxes or not.

deleted 9y ago
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TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
Think about it this way, if I had an objectively better phone than the iPhone I would go out of business because Apple keeps more of their money in dishonest tax schemes. They hurt innovation. And that money is supposed to go to governments to use, which it doesn't, hampering the ability for others to thrive. Now there's is less competition
- valuearb 9y ago
  Apple is the biggest taxpayer in the world. It pays every bit of tax it owes. It should be taxed less, not more. Corporate income taxes are corrosive to maintaining our society.
  - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
    I'm not going to argue whether or not it pays all the taxes it owes. I'm pointing out that if they have access to offshore accounts that most businesses can't, they gain an unfair advantage over those other businesses. If you want to remove corporate income taxes, it should happen at the same time, not selectively to larger corporations.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      They don't "have access to offshore accounts that most businesses don't". They naturally earn most of their profits internationally, and pay taxes to the countries they earn those profits in. If they return those international profits to the US, they'll lose another 40%+ to taxes (closer to 60% if you count individual dividend taxes). So they keep the remaining profits in the lowest tax country/location they can find while it earns interest. They owe Germany nothing more.

nickpp 9y ago

How exactly are they inflicting all that harm, hardship and suffering? In my eyes, they are creating tremendous value every day while following every single law nations impose on them. They would risk everything otherwise. You're throwing demagogic, populist accusations without a single shred of support. Is emotional discourse an acceptable replacement for the rational one?

ehllo 9y ago
Maybe this video from the HMRC.gov.uk helps you to understand why evading tax is bad and it is better for all to pay the full tax ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_VwZ-Cmac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_VwZ-Cmac
- valuearb 9y ago
  Apple pays the full tax. It pays huge amounts of taxes in Germany.
  - ehllo 9y ago
    ... apple clearly evades tax in all markets in europe http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-3702_en.htm http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-3702_en.htm
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Apple needs to keep it's international after tax profits out of the US or it will be forced to pay another 40%+ in taxes on them. So it puts them in Ireland, because Ireland gave it a great tax rate, less than 1%. What should the tax rate be on the interest from billions in savings? Apple isn't' forcing Ireland to build roads or spend any government moneys to allow it to make Irish bank deposits. it's a completely legal arrangement for both Ireland and Apple. It's crap like this that forced the UK out of the EU. Nothing the EU does is going to force Apple to move it's savings to Germany or France so they can impose high taxes on their interest. That cash will go to Asia first.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

Freeloaders.

josejuanisaac 9y ago

“They are doing it too” is legally a valid excuse. The way legal disputes get settled usually is based on the outcome of precedent legal cases and how they relate to the current case. Your moral outrage (and the outrage caused by paradise papers type reports) is just a failure to see the world for what it is. An ant can complain all day about the size of the mammoth, complain that it’s unfair that it’s got a fur coat or that it’s one step is equivalent to hundreds of ant steps, but this won’t change reality. This is how success works: if you do it for so long and in such a way comparable to Apple, you are able to have more leg room than other ants. My only criticism of Apple is that do portray themselves as very humble engineers that love designing beautiful products. Engineers who have any experience designing software and hardware products have a deep admiration for Apple as an organization, specifically because we know exactly how much work goes into a working product, moreso because Apple’s products, even though they are not perfect, show a high level of resiliency both in the market and in our day to day lives. Admitting thus that at least some of the people and companies that hide their money in tax havens made their money in a legitimite way (we’ll get into this later), don’t you think they are entitled to try to save as much of it as they can? The author of the piece makes reference to the mostly public educational system which implies Apple has some social reaponsibility to give back to it’s country. How about the high salaries that Apple pays to its engineers? Isn’t this enough to show that they value craftmanship?

lovich 9y ago
Oh well, guess we should stop all attempts at improving society guys. Apple can do it, so they should do it, and we should stop discussing the matter. Like goddammit man, the moral outrage is not there because people fail to see the world the way it is. It's there precisely _because_ people can see the way it is now and it's fucked up. And paying it's engineers a high salary is enough of a payback to society? Did that cover the roads they ship their goods on? The international Navy that protects their supply lines from overseas factories? The education system which produced their engineers? All the other inputs they rely on and externalities they offload? No it didn't, because once you get rich you get your own set of rules. Paying back what you owe is for the proles
jamesblonde 9y ago

hota_mazi 9y ago

Just a nitpick but they are not "evading" taxes, which would be illegal. The correct term would be "tax avoidance", which is legal (albeit ethically questionable).