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But when it comes to the tax code, "ethical" is a lot murkier. The one piece we can generally agree on is you're required to pay what the law requires you to pa

But when it comes to the tax code, "ethical" is a lot murkier. The one piece we can generally agree on is you're required to pay what the law requires you to pay---no more, no less. Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. To give a concrete example: is it ethically better for the government that spends as much as it does on military infrastructure to have more money, or the company that builds a search engine and a video-sharing service?

jakelazaroff 8y ago
I'm not espousing a particular ethical view here; rather, I'm saying that laws are not our way of dictating ethics by fiat. If Google (or anyone) does something I feel is unethical, I reserve the right to criticize them for it — whether it's legal or not!
dwild 8y ago
> Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. Like pretty much any debate about ethics I would say. When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue that it is actually a business expense, it would be legal to, but we can both agree that it's abusing the law and it wasn't actually a business expense. This is the same, their office in Bermuda (if they even have a physical location there) aren't actually making $23B in 2017, that money was made in others countries, using peoples from theses others countries, using infrastructures from theses others countries, thus theses taxes have to be paid for this reason. This is what I consider unethical.
- candiodari 8y ago
  > you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense I've seen a company exec cheat on his wife with a paid hooker on a holiday to Hawaii make it a business expense (both paying the hooker and the holiday itself) and treating the hooker bad enough the company got sued for sexual harassment (because they paid the hooker, that means ... you can fill in, and no it doesn't matter if they "knew" they were doing it or not), AND not getting fired for it. And while this is a tax offense, the idea of him getting sued by the IRS for this is sadly almost absurd. They might do it if they catch him in a lot bigger problems as well, but not likely. Purely coincidentally, currently in the newspaper, 72 year old millionnaire getting sued for running a company building luxury hotels, collecting unemployment, and charging a government-funded not-for-profit ~1 million euros for consultation services while not registering the income in his personal income statement for taxes. Ironically, this is happened 9 years ago and 7 months, so if the government made even a small error in this case it will be forgiven (which is a near guarantee). Just because you consider something cheating doesn't mean everybody does, or even that it's a common view, or that it's a crime.
- zaidf 8y ago
  When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue... In your example, while you can certainly argue that, I’d say there’s a not-so-negligible non-zero chance the IRS won’t see it that way and any potential risk/penalties don’t make the upside worth it.

jakelazaroff 8y ago

I'm not espousing a particular ethical view here; rather, I'm saying that laws are not our way of dictating ethics by fiat. If Google (or anyone) does something I feel is unethical, I reserve the right to criticize them for it — whether it's legal or not!

dwild 8y ago

> Further ethical constraints and clarifications are forever up for debate. Like pretty much any debate about ethics I would say. When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue that it is actually a business expense, it would be legal to, but we can both agree that it's abusing the law and it wasn't actually a business expense. This is the same, their office in Bermuda (if they even have a physical location there) aren't actually making $23B in 2017, that money was made in others countries, using peoples from theses others countries, using infrastructures from theses others countries, thus theses taxes have to be paid for this reason. This is what I consider unethical.

candiodari 8y ago
> you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense I've seen a company exec cheat on his wife with a paid hooker on a holiday to Hawaii make it a business expense (both paying the hooker and the holiday itself) and treating the hooker bad enough the company got sued for sexual harassment (because they paid the hooker, that means ... you can fill in, and no it doesn't matter if they "knew" they were doing it or not), AND not getting fired for it. And while this is a tax offense, the idea of him getting sued by the IRS for this is sadly almost absurd. They might do it if they catch him in a lot bigger problems as well, but not likely. Purely coincidentally, currently in the newspaper, 72 year old millionnaire getting sued for running a company building luxury hotels, collecting unemployment, and charging a government-funded not-for-profit ~1 million euros for consultation services while not registering the income in his personal income statement for taxes. Ironically, this is happened 9 years ago and 7 months, so if the government made even a small error in this case it will be forgiven (which is a near guarantee). Just because you consider something cheating doesn't mean everybody does, or even that it's a common view, or that it's a crime.
zaidf 8y ago
When I do my deduction, you don't see me trying to make it look like going to the restaurant with my kids is a business expense. It would be possible to argue... In your example, while you can certainly argue that, I’d say there’s a not-so-negligible non-zero chance the IRS won’t see it that way and any potential risk/penalties don’t make the upside worth it.