3 ms·

Spirit of the law vs letter of the law.

• sneak 5y ago
  The spirit of the law isn't written down, and it is unreasonable to expect people to infer it and comply with that inference. If you believe in the rule of law, you believe in the idea that people should only be required to follow the letter of the law. The point of laws is letters - there is literally nothing else to it. Expecting people to follow unwritten law is not a belief in the rule of law.
• kube-system 5y ago
  Most tax avoidance has nothing to do with ambiguous tax law. Most of it is very specific. And if something isn’t specific enough, we already have regulatory agencies who regularly exercise the power to further clarify them. A company moving their income from one location to another to take advantage of lower tax rates is no different than the current exodus of remote-working tech workers from the coasts to lower tax areas. People make decisions based on the law. This isn’t a bad thing, this is what we hope and expect to happen. If the laws do not produce the desired effect, that’s the fault of the legislature, not those following it.
  • yboris 5y ago
    > People make decisions based on the law. But who writes the law? Look into "regulatory capture" and how companies tilt the tax law to their favor. If it costs less money to lobby the government into changing the laws than paying those taxes, the companies will do that. And that's what's been happening!
    • kube-system 5y ago
      Regulatory capture is certainly a problem, but it has nothing to do with letter of the law vs spirit of the law. A corporation following a law it wrote to avoid taxes is certainly following the spirit of that law :)