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Well I'd argue that the ethical difference is fundamentally the scale. How many lives could be changed if they paid taxes according to their social contract? Po
by chiaro 13y ago
Well I'd argue that the ethical difference is fundamentally the scale. How many lives could be changed if they paid taxes according to their social contract? Poverty, crappy healthcare and soaring incarceration are all problems that need money to alleviate.
- eru 13y agoThe money they saved isn't destroyed. They can use it for all kinds of good things now---like giving it back to their shareholders.
- 21echoes 13y agoi do hope you're kidding..
- tomfakes 13y agoThey have a fiduciary duty to do this to make more money for their shareholders. They have no enforceable social contract to provide taxes more than what they can legally pay. They can be sued by their shareholders for not using these schemes Not saying this is right, but this is the way the law works right now.
- chiaro 13y agoI'm referring to the tacit social contract between the state and its citizens, in this case, the idea that the state supports the entrepreneur in the beginning, so that later the entrepreneur can support the state, if they can. I'm probably butchering the term, so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
- tomfakes 13y agoI mis-understood who the 'their' was in your comment. I agree with you on this point. There is an argument that allowing companies these tax breaks brings jobs to your country instead of somewhere else, and this brings prosperity. Certainly Ireland worked this way in the 90s to get their tech scene started. Locally, cities do this too - X year tax breaks to put your factory here instead of there is a common thing. Is the social contract satisfied by just the generation of good paying jobs where there were none previously?
- prostoalex 13y agoSo how did the European states affected by this support Google, the entrepreneur, in the beginning?