Moreover, paying more taxes than is necessary would be disingenuous to shareholders, especially as that 44 billion would almost certainly make a noticeable dent

Moreover, paying more taxes than is necessary would be disingenuous to shareholders, especially as that 44 billion would almost certainly make a noticeable dent in profits. If I had a CPA that could have saved me 44 billion in taxes, but didn't, I'd fire them, and almost certainly, so would just about anybody else. I've said it a million times, complaining about tax avoidance is akin to calling me a cheater for putting a '1' in the 'ones' column while playing Yahtzee. If I roll bunk, and it's fairly early in the game, I have the option of either putting a low value in the ones column (smart, as the max value there is 4), wasting the bonus (dumber, as the max value there is ... uhhh, I dunno, let's say 35 or so), or scratching out the Yahtzee (debatable either way). I am certainly not obligated to scratch the fours column if I was hoping to roll a high number of fours, and am perfectly justified in choosing whichever option suits me best, and that kind of good decision-making prowess is kind of the point of the game, if you ignore all the other random dice-rolling bits. Actual cheating on taxes looks more like turning my dice over to show all sixes, when I obviously rolled something different. Complaining about someone who played by the rules and made smart choices just seems naive, to me, but in an era where we voted in the guy who promised to tax the rich to pay for the government's bad choices, I suppose it's what we all deserve.