3 ms·
A previous employer had an extremely weird WAN topology, until you realised that all this data was circumnavigating the world as part of a grand tax reduction s
by gaius 8y ago
A previous employer had an extremely weird WAN topology, until you realised that all this data was circumnavigating the world as part of a grand tax reduction strategy. All fully legal of course.
In the end they simplified by simply cutting a deal with the Irish government. Of course they also went on enjoying all the facilities and infra provided by those who did pay their fair share of UK taxes. If any of the directors or their children had been taken ill or been in an accident, they surely would have expected the NHS to take care of them...
At the time, this was many years ago, I just saw all this as a fascinating technical challenge in database replication and distributed transactions; I’m obviously alot more woke now and wouldn’t get involved with it now.
- Scoundreller 8y agoMy guess is that they tried to claim the "value-add" was all in this other jurisdiction (e.g. the DB or the "secret sauce" algorithm, or something as boring as applying their "valuable" trademark after paying a license fee). Canadian mining companies do this with "hedging" contracts with their Swiss subsidiary that is basically a desk with 3 directors. Wait until you've hit a low in the market, then sign away the future growth to the subsidiary for "price-stability". On the WAN side, I deliberately choose foreign AWS locations just to avoid the sales tax from domestic AWS sites...