5 ms·

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 companie

by 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.
  - dontreact 5y ago
    This is a theoretical framework you are presenting but it does not reflect reality. The text of many bills is written by people working for corporations. A politician needs to get funding in order to be re-elected and have any meaningful ability to make a difference. In theory all the power for determining laws is supposed to lie in the hands of the politicians, but in practice a significant fraction of the power lies in the hands of corporations. So it doesn’t make sense to only look at part of the power structure that has set the system up this way.
- nvilcins 5y ago
  What about explicitly bringing up and fighting that mechanism in the first place?
DanBC 5y ago
Tax laws are what's written in acts and statutes, but also how the courts interpret those laws. When a company plans their tax they can either use the laws as they're intended (tax planning), they can deceive the tax authorities in order to illegally reduce their tax burden (tax evasion) or they can use the laws in ways which aren't necessarily intended, but which aren't yet outright illegal because we haven't had a court ruling yet (tax avoidance). It's really easy to say "just change the law", but there are problems with that. Prosecuting complex tax cases is fantastically expensive, and so tax authorities tend to only go to court when i) the case is obvious and ii) everything else has failed. (This includes for the small guy too -- if I chose not to pay my tax there are escalating steps of intervention before I get prosecuted). This means we simply don't know if a particular tax avoidance scheme is illegal or not, and we're unlikely to find out unless the tax authorities move to a more punitive regime. And we don't necessarily want to give more power to the state. We want to limit the power of the state to some extent, which is why a lot of pretty unpleasant behaviours are perfectly legal, and it's why we impose that "beyond all reasonable doubt" requirement on criminal conviction. Corporate values aren't (at least they shouldn't be) nonsense. A company could say "we do this because it's legally mandated and we don't have a choice", but that's the worst reason for doing something. Companies that make use of education, transport infrastructure, policing, healthcare, (all the things that are paid for by taxation) should pay their fair amount of tax, rather than using the law in weird unexpected ways to reduce their tax burden by an unreasonable amount. There is a cultural thing going on here. No-one in the UK is saying that companies should go out of their way to pay more tax than they need to. And reducing their tax burden a bit is probably seen as okay. But we do have the concept of "taking the piss", and a lot of these companies are taking the piss. They need to realise that public tolerance for this is low and reducing, and that if they don't change their behaviours they're going to see increased tax regulation.

by 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.
- dontreact 5y ago
  This is a theoretical framework you are presenting but it does not reflect reality. The text of many bills is written by people working for corporations. A politician needs to get funding in order to be re-elected and have any meaningful ability to make a difference. In theory all the power for determining laws is supposed to lie in the hands of the politicians, but in practice a significant fraction of the power lies in the hands of corporations. So it doesn’t make sense to only look at part of the power structure that has set the system up this way.
nvilcins 5y ago
What about explicitly bringing up and fighting that mechanism in the first place?

DanBC 5y ago

Tax laws are what's written in acts and statutes, but also how the courts interpret those laws. When a company plans their tax they can either use the laws as they're intended (tax planning), they can deceive the tax authorities in order to illegally reduce their tax burden (tax evasion) or they can use the laws in ways which aren't necessarily intended, but which aren't yet outright illegal because we haven't had a court ruling yet (tax avoidance). It's really easy to say "just change the law", but there are problems with that. Prosecuting complex tax cases is fantastically expensive, and so tax authorities tend to only go to court when i) the case is obvious and ii) everything else has failed. (This includes for the small guy too -- if I chose not to pay my tax there are escalating steps of intervention before I get prosecuted). This means we simply don't know if a particular tax avoidance scheme is illegal or not, and we're unlikely to find out unless the tax authorities move to a more punitive regime. And we don't necessarily want to give more power to the state. We want to limit the power of the state to some extent, which is why a lot of pretty unpleasant behaviours are perfectly legal, and it's why we impose that "beyond all reasonable doubt" requirement on criminal conviction. Corporate values aren't (at least they shouldn't be) nonsense. A company could say "we do this because it's legally mandated and we don't have a choice", but that's the worst reason for doing something. Companies that make use of education, transport infrastructure, policing, healthcare, (all the things that are paid for by taxation) should pay their fair amount of tax, rather than using the law in weird unexpected ways to reduce their tax burden by an unreasonable amount. There is a cultural thing going on here. No-one in the UK is saying that companies should go out of their way to pay more tax than they need to. And reducing their tax burden a bit is probably seen as okay. But we do have the concept of "taking the piss", and a lot of these companies are taking the piss. They need to realise that public tolerance for this is low and reducing, and that if they don't change their behaviours they're going to see increased tax regulation.