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Often with complex tax schemes we don't know if they're legal or not because they haven't been tested in courts. Some governments focus on low-hanging fruit or
by DanBC 7y ago
Often with complex tax schemes we don't know if they're legal or not because they haven't been tested in courts.
Some governments focus on low-hanging fruit or on flagrant tax evasion. They don't want a long running court case costing millions with an uncertain outcome.
So we never get to find out whether this scheme is legal avoidance or illegal evasion.
But, even if it's legal avoidance: I pay my tax. Why shouldn't this huge company who seeks to benefit from tax-payer funded institutions also pay their tax?
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoSuch schemes are sometimes described with the tongue-in-cheek term "tax avoision".
- ryanlol 7y agoSo, what exactly stops the politicians from writing simple and clear tax laws? It wouldn’t be hard for the lawmakers to eliminate this uncertainty, they just want to remain competitive.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoI've always wondered what about the spirit of the law/contract in these cases?
- ArnoVW 7y agoDon't know the particular tax law in question, but perhaps it would help you if you thought you of lawmaking as making software (in fact in French the word for law is 'code') Everything you code has to be coherent, requirements change, and when they do it is hard to get everyone to agree on the details. You have 200 years of legacy code, have to be compatible with other states and countries, have to support all possible edge cases, and your code is interpreted not by a computer but by a human. Are there broken laws? Sure. Is it easy to make good ones? Not so sure.