5 ms·

I've taken to calling it anti-American (or anti-whatever country in which they're minimizing their taxes). How better to tell the world that you don't care abou

I've taken to calling it anti-American (or anti-whatever country in which they're minimizing their taxes). How better to tell the world that you don't care about the societies that made your success possible than to refuse to help fund them?

sneak 5y ago
This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.
- bitterblotter 5y ago
  not avoiding taxes = communism
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Its an inherently good thing if the parties with most of the money aren't ABLE to also opt out of substantially more of the needed burden than the average person but we live in an imperfect world. When deciding if your tax minimization strategy is a good thing simply ask yourself what would happen if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing. The obvious thing in that scenario is that society collapses. This is obviously not a good thing. Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. When your strategy is clearly a contrived misuse of an overly complicated tax code that goes against the spirit if not the letter of the law you should be able to figure out what side of the moral line you are on.
  - sneak 5y ago
    > Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. That isn't clear to me, because using the government to collect revenue hasn't been demonstrated to be a benefit. This still presupposes that government revenue is inherently beneficial. I think if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing, the government would collapse. That's not the same thing as society collapsing, society and the government are not coterminous. Tax revenues don't go to "society", they go to the government. It is a logical leap to assume a collapse of society when the government loses funding.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      Do you really see a situation where the US government collapses and US society does not?
      - mypalmike 5y ago
        That's the very essence of libertarian fantasy.
      - sneak 5y ago
        Every scenario where the US government ends/collapses is such, outside of the Dr Strangelove ending.
        michaelmrose 5y ago
        A huge portion of the population is directly receiving benefits that enable them to pay for life critical medical care/meds, food, and shelter including a majority of people receiving social security and every military member and other government employee. The entirety of the population is doing business in dollars that would end up worth nothing which means everything grinds to a halt while people figure out how to reorganize this brave new world. Right now you own what you own courtesy of the government providing armed men to keep others from taking it and courts to settle differences. This reorganization would inevitably mean that different groups compete to be the new powers that be. The obvious inheritors would be the existing state power structures which controls lots of armed men and women but nothing is stopping people from setting up their own feifdoms and disagreements about who controls what could trivially have to be settled by shooting each other. It's not like we don't have plenty of examples of failed states collapsing. Look at Yugoslavia for example. Can you provide me with some counterexamples?
    - knuthsat 5y ago
      Tax revenues trickle down to society very quickly. The amount of money trickling down is ridiculous that one might even call it corruption. As long as it is fairly distributed and there isn't a fixed amount of players getting most of the money, it's fine.
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  For any given tax rate, yes. This because it means the tax rate won't need to be as high to pay for the same things as it otherwise would have to, for everyone else.
bigbaguette 5y ago
Well it's not only a matter of helping countries, but funding the civilisation infrastructure that allows businesses to operate and turn a profit in the first place. In the case of Uber, there wouldn't be much business without roads
danuker 5y ago
Then again, what does the US government do with said revenue? Its citizens are certainly not helped when it comes to medical issues, for instance. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure?country=USA~FRA~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
- Vadoff 5y ago
  It goes into the pockets of other companies who lobbied for it, that's one reason why our military spending is so high.
slver 5y ago
You write laws and tell companies to follow strictly the letter of the law or else. And that's precisely what they do. The problem doesn't sit at the companies.
- dontreact 5y ago
  Laws get written with a lot of help and influence from lobbyists who do sit at the companies.
  - slver 5y ago
    Let's get couple of things straight: 1. Politicians are responsible for the laws. 2. Companies are responsible for following the laws. If you have a beef with any of the above, address the right parties. How they interact and depend on each other is a fact, but also it's not relevant to the above two points. Everyone has a clear responsibility. Furthermore the phrase "dodged taxes" means "they structured their revenue so they paid less taxes than if they would structure it otherwise". Who the hell says you gotta structure your revenue in order to MAXIMIZE your taxes? Do you do that? If not, you also "dodge taxes" as far as the media is concerned.
    - aweiland 5y ago
      ALEC literally writes "model bills" written by industry and are submitted word-for-word by politicians.
    - rhizome 5y ago
      >Who the hell says you gotta structure your revenue in order to MAXIMIZE your taxes? I don't think it's about rules ("gotta"), it's about ethics. I wouldn't say that maximizing taxes is anything, but the desire to minimize taxes is definitely anti-social.
      - slver 5y ago
        So everyone is antisocial then.
driverdan 5y ago
Avoiding taxes is as American as baseball and apple pie.

sneak 5y ago

This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.

bitterblotter 5y ago
not avoiding taxes = communism
michaelmrose 5y ago
Its an inherently good thing if the parties with most of the money aren't ABLE to also opt out of substantially more of the needed burden than the average person but we live in an imperfect world. When deciding if your tax minimization strategy is a good thing simply ask yourself what would happen if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing. The obvious thing in that scenario is that society collapses. This is obviously not a good thing. Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. When your strategy is clearly a contrived misuse of an overly complicated tax code that goes against the spirit if not the letter of the law you should be able to figure out what side of the moral line you are on.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. That isn't clear to me, because using the government to collect revenue hasn't been demonstrated to be a benefit. This still presupposes that government revenue is inherently beneficial. I think if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing, the government would collapse. That's not the same thing as society collapsing, society and the government are not coterminous. Tax revenues don't go to "society", they go to the government. It is a logical leap to assume a collapse of society when the government loses funding.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Do you really see a situation where the US government collapses and US society does not?
    - mypalmike 5y ago
      That's the very essence of libertarian fantasy.
    - sneak 5y ago
      Every scenario where the US government ends/collapses is such, outside of the Dr Strangelove ending.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        A huge portion of the population is directly receiving benefits that enable them to pay for life critical medical care/meds, food, and shelter including a majority of people receiving social security and every military member and other government employee. The entirety of the population is doing business in dollars that would end up worth nothing which means everything grinds to a halt while people figure out how to reorganize this brave new world. Right now you own what you own courtesy of the government providing armed men to keep others from taking it and courts to settle differences. This reorganization would inevitably mean that different groups compete to be the new powers that be. The obvious inheritors would be the existing state power structures which controls lots of armed men and women but nothing is stopping people from setting up their own feifdoms and disagreements about who controls what could trivially have to be settled by shooting each other. It's not like we don't have plenty of examples of failed states collapsing. Look at Yugoslavia for example. Can you provide me with some counterexamples?
  - knuthsat 5y ago
    Tax revenues trickle down to society very quickly. The amount of money trickling down is ridiculous that one might even call it corruption. As long as it is fairly distributed and there isn't a fixed amount of players getting most of the money, it's fine.
yxhuvud 5y ago
For any given tax rate, yes. This because it means the tax rate won't need to be as high to pay for the same things as it otherwise would have to, for everyone else.

bigbaguette 5y ago

Well it's not only a matter of helping countries, but funding the civilisation infrastructure that allows businesses to operate and turn a profit in the first place. In the case of Uber, there wouldn't be much business without roads

danuker 5y ago

Then again, what does the US government do with said revenue? Its citizens are certainly not helped when it comes to medical issues, for instance. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure?country=USA~FRA~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

Vadoff 5y ago
It goes into the pockets of other companies who lobbied for it, that's one reason why our military spending is so high.

slver 5y ago

You write laws and tell companies to follow strictly the letter of the law or else. And that's precisely what they do. The problem doesn't sit at the companies.

dontreact 5y ago
Laws get written with a lot of help and influence from lobbyists who do sit at the companies.
- slver 5y ago
  Let's get couple of things straight: 1. Politicians are responsible for the laws. 2. Companies are responsible for following the laws. If you have a beef with any of the above, address the right parties. How they interact and depend on each other is a fact, but also it's not relevant to the above two points. Everyone has a clear responsibility. Furthermore the phrase "dodged taxes" means "they structured their revenue so they paid less taxes than if they would structure it otherwise". Who the hell says you gotta structure your revenue in order to MAXIMIZE your taxes? Do you do that? If not, you also "dodge taxes" as far as the media is concerned.
  - aweiland 5y ago
    ALEC literally writes "model bills" written by industry and are submitted word-for-word by politicians.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    >Who the hell says you gotta structure your revenue in order to MAXIMIZE your taxes? I don't think it's about rules ("gotta"), it's about ethics. I wouldn't say that maximizing taxes is anything, but the desire to minimize taxes is definitely anti-social.
    - slver 5y ago
      So everyone is antisocial then.

driverdan 5y ago

Avoiding taxes is as American as baseball and apple pie.