1. Fiduciary responsibility - Corporations have a financial objective to minimize their tax burden, in order to maximize shareholder value. Sure.
2. Legality. There are numerous loopholes that are technically legal. And it's remarkable how much gray area there is when it comes to tax law. This is why you have the big teams of lawyers to figure out how to best game the system and avoid taxation, while just barely staying on the legal side of the line.
3. Legal Consequences. And if they go to far and get caught breaking the law? No big deal. They can go to court and then settle. Sure, there will be a fine, but they knew that was a risk.
4. Jurisdictions and Multinationals. Countries can only make laws that take effect within their borders. But MNCs operate across multiple countries, and can effectively play jurisdictions off against one another.
5. Spirit of the Law. While lawyers may argue what they're doing is technically legal, it is certainly against the spirit of the law. The law did not intend for corporations to shift all the profits from where they are made to low tax haven jurisdictions.
Governments are trying to address these issues, as corporations will be doing their best to stay one step ahead of the law. This is why the OECD has started the BEPS movement to come up with a coordinated response. One of their initial goals is to create some transparency, so they can at least get some visibility into what's going on. That seems like a good first step.
2. The fact that you can "game the system" and remain squarely in the "legal" column makes the system broken.
3. Considering that fines are typically a fraction of what they should be, again the system is broken. Consequences should threaten the ability of a company to remain afloat, not be a slap on the wrist that doesn't even dent the bottom line.
4. You perform business in a country? Pay the taxes for all revenue factually originating in that country, not technically based on loopholes. If revenue originates from a customer/client/subsidiary in country X, you pay taxes in country X; you don't get to have customers in country X, but pretend like your business in country Y really took their money. Simple as that.
5. Exactly this. The fact that it is not intended, but is possible, makes the system broken.
Governments need to crack down on this sort of thing - HARD. The laws need to be rewritten from the ground up, but this will never happen because of another ugly facet of capitalism - at least in the US - lobbying. Also, self-interested politicians - how many of the politicians who could rewrite the laws have their own businesses that are avoiding taxes which implies a conflict of interest? Large companies that threaten to abandon doing business because state X or country X makes them pay tax? Farewell, we don't need you. This also applies to incentives, which some states are famous for. Individual states should not be competing for companies' business by reducing taxes or offering reimbursement programs.
Ignoring that who will enforce it? If say a Russian owes taxes to the US how will they get the payment if the person doesn't want to pay?
But even then why should the taxes go to that country? All the infrastructure to allow your business to operate in the first place is in your country. The roads to get your employees to work etc.
That being said if your going to open factories or offices in another country than I believe you should be required to have a corporation in that country and pay taxes in that country for the revenues those entities make. But even that is challenging. It's honestly a very hard issue to resolve...
Basically all I'm saying is that it's not an easy problem and there are no easy and obvious answers :(
Clearly the tax has to be paid somewhere, and I'll bet every jurisdiction has an argument why theirs is the right place to collect it. No wonder tax or trade treaties take so long to negotiate.
The same justification could be made for accepting international credit card payments online, but companies like Stripe are happy to provide you with a service that takes away the hassle. If they can do that, then I'd say they would be perfectly willing to solve the local tax problem for you.
You seem to be wanting a consumption tax rather than an income tax. This is known by economists to be the least distortionary tax, for the exact reason you argue.
It's also highly criticized by left wing types since it taxes people in proportion to the benefit they receive from society rather than what they produce for society. Typically poor people consume more than they produce, while rich people produce more than they consume.
Large companies that threaten to abandon doing business because state X or country X makes them pay tax? Farewell, we don't need you.
Except that very often, we do. Just look at Austin - as a result of their little feud with Uber/Lyft, they are now providing below sub-developing world level services.
But the rest of the points are accurate. They are doing nothing illegal and it's stupid to expect people to pay more tax than they owe. If countries want them to pay more tax, then change the law. It's silly this is even a discussion.
It's very clear who lawmakers are looking out for.
Just to clarify, did you mean TPP, TTIP, both, or something else?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...
I have never heard of a successful shareholder lawsuit over corporate leadership failing their fiduciary responsibility because they didn't find all the loopholes for limiting their tax liability.
26 U.S. Code § 7201 - Attempt to evade or defeat tax:
"Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law"
I have worked at companies performing the "double-irish". True, they aren't prosecuted. But legal? Because a british lawyer says it is? 26 U.S. Code § 7201 is extremely easy to read and meant to be very vague. It isn't complicated. They "could be viewed as" breaking the US law and that is enough for some IRS investigators. Why they don't? <- I feel, it is more profitable to tear apart thousands of small local businesses using algorithms and automated mailing. If there was any kind of left leaning shift in US politics I would assume a few congressional hearings. Sure Google,Facebook,etc got away with many years of tax evasion, but that doesn't mean the governments find it in anyway legal.
Further: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Double_I...
The above info graphic clearly shows an attempt to defeat the US the 26 U.S. Code § 7201. This is not only illegal but morally reprehensible.
Intuitively, it feels bad. But until the profits actually come back to the U.S., the USG doesn't have much of a case.
I do think that EU countries, the EU parliament, and the European Council have a responsibility to their citizens to close these loopholes. It is not fair for Ireland to have a minor advantage (a few thousand jobs) at the cost of depriving other EU countries of billions of Euros of tax receipts.
Why should that tax revenue instead go to a different country that didn't contribute to it?
The employees in the offices are citizens of that country or immigrants approved by the local government of that country. If they are U.S. citizens then they typically pay income tax to the U.S. (depending on the reciprocity).
The infrastructure (roads, water, energy, police & fire protection, healthcare, etc.) being used by those offices and employees were paid for by that country.
Also the citizens in that country are the ones paying for a product or service - so again, why should a different company reap the tax revenue?
Whether that's true or not is a task for the courts to decide, but considering that there is a long history of the US government not taxing overseas profit until it comes to the USA, I'd say that this is an indicator that the government has, to date, agreed with the corporations on this.
Since these are felony allegations (criminal not civil) IRS investigators should sit a few of these CFOs down in a cement room and ask: "Does any of this money come back to the US?"
Then the CFO has a few options: 1) lie to a federal agent (not a good plan) 2) plead the 5th (not a good plan) 3) state to a federal officer that none of the money is used, transferred, or used to pay employees of said corporation by proxy.
I would assume these wouldn't go well at all.
Yes I am well versed in the new stories. The entire point is to move funds out of the country and avoid taxes. They aren't investing in Spain's tech future. They will use this money (stolen from the US people) illegally to: produce products overseas by proxy, perform HR functions by proxy, marketing by proxy, etc. All these products/services are then sold under the company and for more US profit.
The crux of my argument is that you won't find a U.S. felony here, no matter how bad you want it.
I agree it's unfair, but I can't fault anyone for trying to legally minimize their tax burden. Tax law should just be simple enough that anyone can do it themselves.
However, the direct and indirect pressure large companies exert on governments to promote/create these loopholes is absurd. I recently went to a latin american country which is promoting foreign investment. Guess what tools they are using to promote such FDI? Correct, tax credits, tax agreements with tax heavens, zero withholding taxes on dividends, etc. I won't go into more detail, but I've seen obscene (but legal) tax structures were little-to-no corporate taxes nor capital gains taxes have been paid in +billion euro transactions.
IMHO, this is unfair to everyday citizens. Citizens end up taking the burden of supporting the govt budget, at the expense of higher tax rates.
Unfortunately in the EU, there is very little interest from countries like The Netherlands, Ireland, and Luxembourg in implementing a common fiscal policy, with no loopholes, as this would considerably damage their "competitive" economies.
This is not the end all solution but it at least makes everything far, far simpler.
Most corporate tax avoidance strategies take advantage of laws intended to prevent different countries from taxing the same dollar of profit, and those rules will still exist in any reasonable tax structure.
The real problem comes when these deals disadvantage local businesses competing with the big foreign conglomerates. But often these deals are really only necessary because the government has set up ridiculously high trade barriers, so the only way to get investment is with ludicrously generous deals. Brazil seems to be a classic example of this. The entire economic system is tangled mess of massive market distortions.
You're mixing up terms here. Tax avoidance is minimizing your tax bill within the law. Tax evasion is what you do when you pay less tax than your legal obligation.
It might be rational to hire a big team of tax lawyers to find loopholes. It might be rational to launch PR campaigns to misinform the public about your tax affairs. It might also be rational to hire private investigators to dig up dirt on politicians and blackmail them. Or bribe them, or otherwise corrupt them.
UK tax law is complicated partly because the large accountancy firms have become deeply entwined with the policy making process [1]. This is used as a way to introduce and then milk advantage from the complexity. This goes way beyond just playing the tax game by the rules.
I do think the government has a responsibility for allowing these abuses to occur. That doesn't make the abuses OK though.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/apr/26/accountancy...
Maybe we can blame people for behaving unethically instead of believing this shlock?
You would quite literally see revolt / insurrection in the western world, especially America and other former anglo colonies, at the idea of a One World Tax Authority, which would rightfully be seen as a part of one world government, the so-called New World Order that conservatives have maintain DEFCON1 fear of for decades.
Even if it did exist, if if you had a global tax authority with the weight of a global government to enforce it... that doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
There are plenty of tax havens in American states despite a national legislature that could squash them.
On big reason Americans were unrepresented in the Panama Papers leak is that Americans used on-shored havens. They had far less need of an offshore haven when current corporate tax rules allow you to incorporate and tax dodge in Delaware or another friendly state without leaving the country.
If the US can't or won't control domestic tax havens, I'm not so sure a global government would have better luck.
Plus, one world tax authority means one single target for corruption. The Googles of the world, with literal billions to spend, they'd hyper-focus on corrupting that authority to their desires.
Saying we can tax them globally is like saying we can tax them domestically. We fail on the latter, so i can't imagine we'd succeed on the former.
And while i do agree that blame alone is of little use, blame is often the precursor to action. You have to decide who is at fault and or what to focus fixes on, via blame, before you can actually fix them imo. When i see blame discussions like the above, i just assume (perhaps foolishly) that it's the discussion prior to the fixing stage.
Not that the above discussion will fix anything, of course.. but if we can't decide on what is to blame, how can we decide what is to be fixed?
spot on. this.
But that is the political class, and they are the ones driving the train for companies to pay more tax. Which doesn't make any sense if all that is truly required is for them to fix their own laws and unethical behaviours. Right?
I think what you're missing is the fact that the Tax Office is pursuing Google for an apparently grounded belief that they were, in fact, acting illegally. (That is, making false representations as to the true functional roles of its local subsidiaries, so as to make its locally-generated revenue appear much smaller than it actually is, per a recent El País article).
Not simply for being "clever" and minimizing their tax burden within established guidelines.
Google and Facebook grew their profits by advertisements, traditional media (that did not innovate anything) lost all this revenue.
So they(traditional media) are terribly biassed against Google and make everything they can to harm the company. They destroyed Google News for example.
Rational != Ethical
First, the legislature often decides that raising or lowering specific taxes is a good way to encourage some behavior or other (i.e. mortgage tax deductions or extra taxes on cigarettes). Most of these are actually pretty justifiable individually, but eventually you end up with too many exceptions and special cases for any nonspecialist to keep them all in their head.
Second, there's a huge body of caselaw and regulatory rulings that crop up around the actual tax code. Dozens of courts somewhat haphazardly decide that this weird edge case counts as income, but that weird case doesn't. Again, almost all of these are pretty reasonable taken in isolation, but you end up with a swiss cheese of arbitrary and contradictory rules.
Finally, wealthy entities will inevitably try to game the system. They will try to find a few well-intentioned but poorly thought out edge cases and alter their finances to try and intentionally fit a huge percentage of their income into them. By the time this happens, it's often very difficult to fix without hurting the innocent bystanders that the edge cases were put in place for in the first place.
Wealthy individuals and companies do lobby for favorable tax provisions, and politicians do sometimes pass laws specifically to benefit those entities. But the reality isn't that simple. International tax law is an emergent phenomenon, and it's really only going to bend to systemic incentive changes.
The reason politics is full of vapid stupidity is that powerful entities want it that way. If the population wasn't distracted by guns, abortion, and gay sex they might actually be paying attention to issues that matter.
A business can't tell their landlord that they owe no rent because they are "unprofitable" ? Why then do we accept this excuse from the businesses who benefit the most from our public systems.
We do? Why? Because, by one interpretation, they pay lip service to it by saying "Don't be evil"/"Do the right thing"? I take those as marketing (both to the public and to their employees).
Even if we take their mottos as honest statements of intent, how do you know that their definitions of "evil" and "right" match yours? Or that their definitions won't shift to fit the situation?
If they are amoral entity, I'm sure they won't care for Spanish government doing unethical but not illegal things to them as well.
Why would that be true? It would be inconsistent for them not to fight for their own self-interest. Also: Governments must be held to higher standards than corporations.
I expect the Spanish government to act (nominally) in the best interests of its citizens. I expect Google to act in its own best interests.
It's fine to take a modern, legalistic, maximize-shareholder-value-or-gtfo approach and eschew the ethics and spirit of law perspective altogether. However, generally it would be irrational for corporation to expect a favourable outcome in a survivalist game on a legal field against the host government. That's why most corporations at least do lip service to ethics, community values, social responsibility and so on. Which leads us to square one.
I can definitely fault them for trying to minimize their tax burden. Taxes shouldn't be seen as a burden, they should be seen as an opportunity. A way to contribute to the society that created that opportunity to pay taxes in the first place, since every dollar paid in taxes represents several earned on top of society's foundation.
Justice like secret FISA courts and no-due-process restrictions on travel?
Human rights like free speech? Good job Merkle, Ergodan is proud. Due process? Haha. Protection from unreasonable searches and seizures? "Civil asset forfeiture" would like a word.
Quality of life? You mean the thing I get from novel technology, but that is constantly hindered by IP law and overregulation?
> as a society we have chosen to collect through taxes
Huh, I don't remember being privy to that decision... In fact, as best I can tell, most people are compelled to pay taxes by the threat of violence!
>A way to contribute to the society
And a way to contribute to droning of US citizens, and the funding of Israeli weapons programs, and corporate subsidies, and a way to pay for massive surveillance apparatus... Great!
You're right; society created many of the opportunities we have today. The government isn't society.
What a load of garbage. Taxes are theft at the end of a gun and we have little choice in how they are used. It's downright ignorant to believe that most taxes are used for the betterment of society rather than to line the pockets of select constituencies. Your conflation of "society" with "government" is fictitious.
That's a big reason why democracies became popular (see for example the french revolution, or the boston tea party). A democracy is a system in which the residents of a country (directly or indirectly) decide on matters of government, like which taxes should be collected and how they should be spent.
And really, it's human's that guarantee the state's rights, not the other way around. The state is an abstract concept that exists only because humans gave it that right at some point.
I lived for 6 months in Damascus. It was an incredible city with lots of History. It breaks your heart to remember people younger than you that you know are dead now. The country is devastated and everything stops working.
You go to Servia, normal people could barely survive, long after the war. A few guys made themselves rich at the expense of normal people.
You go to Congo(old Zaire) and experience so much pain over the war there.
In Congo it is about Cobalt and coltan, diamonds, gold. In Syria it is about strategic position, natural gas. In Libia it is about energy resources.
A couple of powerful countries decide to plunder weak countries and war is the way they do it. If their leaders are not ok about plundering their own country you just give millions(or billions) of dollars in weapons to the opposition.
Once a war is started, it is like a drug, both sides needs weapons just for survival and they will do anything for getting them, basically selling their country for almost nothing.
A huge business at the expense of entire families dying and loosing everything they have, women being raped and the state collapsing, infrastructures destroyed.
If legal, corporations are just doing what is allowed. I hate them for it, but ultimately, i hate that it is allowed. If the law was put into place via illegal bribing/etc, then yes, both parties are to blame. But if it's all above board, then it's entirely on the Government imo.
Take America for example. Lobbying is an utterly disgusting practice in my eyes, yet i can't blame the groups doing the lobbying. I would too if i had the resources. I blame the government for enabling lobbying, and not shutting it down as it stands now.
Corporations have invaded Government, but ultimately the Government is what needs to be fixed to not allow corporations to get away with this.
edit: And of course, you could just continue with the blame train, saying people are to blame, etcetc. I'd agree with you there too. We all need to do something, to fix this damn Government(s).
Again, the key focus of the Spanish investigation is not into whether Google rationally took advantage of "loopholes" -- but whether they made false representations as to their business structure and the activities of their local subsidiaries.
See today's El País article for an explanation of the authorities' reasons behind the raid.
Your business does not deserve my money, my support, or my respect if you are not proud to pay your fair share for the common resources that are the foundations of its success.
So if a company, instead of staying well within the boundary decides to skirt it (and I'm sure that they take into account the probability of being caught on the wrong side in their minimization process), it is only fair that they get a visit from the tax man.
I think the current chase after big companies is mostly a change in the interpretation of the spirit of the law. One could argue it creates a dangerous climate for business and it's probably right, but at the same time no one ever argued that what those companies did was moral in regard of the law, only that it followed it's wording.
(I personally think our laws should change, but at the same time it's obvious that countries like Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands... Would veto it at the EU level)
However, I don't think a legitimate argument can be made that companies should pay what amount to optional taxes (taxes they could avoid but don't). Lawmakers are free to change the laws, but large corporations will always pay the minimum allowed by those laws.
Governments have the ability to levy taxes. If they need money they should levy a tax. It's that simple. There is no 'right amount' that a company should be paying that is more than the law requires them to pay.
I, for instance, in my country, am relatively conservative on my tax returns. I do not push everything out to the point of maximal complexity & maximal returns.
The reason I do this is twofold. If my accountant makes a mistake or a bad call, I am still personally liable for the tax I didn't pay + penalties, even though I sought and obtained professional advice. I know of cases now where people have received "audit shocks" where it turns out the government disagrees with how far they're pushing things, and now they owe money + penalties. Increase that sting and those penalties and watch the risk/return equation change.
The other two reasons are: I pay to support local community and infrastructure. I don't mind paying a bit extra to support public transport in my area, for instance, so if I can find a way to make targeted contributions (as opposed, say, my money going to a contractor in Iraq), then I'll put a bit more in.
And the third reason I don't pay minimal taxes it's a form of social contract/political insurance. I know that if I'm a total prick, or want to do things in the future, if I haven't paid my share, or if someone wants to audit me and go through my books as a political game or to make a point, I have far more political capital and support from the population of I show I'm a good citizen vs "I basically will fuck you all to the maximum extent and screw you". This also provides me a clean conscience, legitimacy, authenticity, and general good will.
Plus if anyone does audit me, for political reasons or otherwise, maybe I'll get a small refund or ruling in my favour, which, at such times, I could really use...
Of course that's how it works. There is nothing that stops you from donating extra to the government. If you really wanted to you could easily do it.
The tax authorities wouldn't stop you if you decided not to deduct your 401k contributions from your income. Or to not deduct your mortgage interest.
Now you can give all your income as you desire.
[Edit]: Moreover, you still fail to address how I've suggested any notion of right amounts or paying more than the law requires. I have not. Since the comment I replied to used 'avoid', and you think avoid implies evading taxes, then you seem to assert I should understand the GP to be saying optional taxes are those taxes a company can take action to evade. This is even more problematic.
The effort a corporation expends to avoid taxes, such as those under scrutiny in the matter at hand, are not at all homologous to electing to take a dependent exemption for an individual citizen. Reducing one's tax bill via deductions and elected credits is not the same as going to great lengths to create special structures that enable a corporation to avoid tax bills altogether.
You've said it's not the same. How is it different? Both ways of reducing tax burden are things that the laws permit, and that have been established as lawful from much precedent.
Beyond that, there is quite an orders of magnitude difference between electing to take an individual deduction as a citizen and establishing complicated structural entities specifically to avoid or reduce taxes by increasing the complexity of determining tax obligation. If you do not see these things are different, I doubt I could convince you otherwise.
If you can't articulate why they are different, then perhaps the distinction isn't as clear as you seem to think.
Why do you think a person incorporates a small business instead of operating as a sole proprietor? Why do you think small businesses save all kinds of receipts and pay accountants to ensure they are maximizing expenses?
For your edification, I run a business. I do not pursue complicated measures or hire accountants to minimize or avoid taxation, maximize expenses, or anything similar. I practice what I preach, as the saying goes. And such behavior is entirely counter to everything I'm saying is important here.
Is your line in the sand the involvement of accountants or lawyers? Any publicly traded company needs both of those anyway even if they have extremely boring returns. So what is it that draws the line for you?
> Who says I can't articulate the difference?
The comments have not included one so far. What you've said is that one thing is not the same as another, but you have not included an explanation of what difference you see there as being, or how that difference leads to one thing being moral and the other immoral.
> What is lawful != what is ethical.
> The effort a corporation expends to avoid taxes, such as those under scrutiny in the matter at hand, are not at all homologous to electing to take a dependent exemption for an individual citizen.
> Reducing one's tax bill via deductions and elected credits is not the same as going to great lengths to create special structures that enable a corporation to avoid tax bills altogether.
You've said they're not the same, but you haven't explained what the differences are, why the differences are significant to this discussion, and how the differences should support your analysis of the morality. Your comments leave it to the reader to infer what the differences are between one thing or another, and draw conclusions from them that support your point.
I read your comments as expressing the point, "These things are not the same, and one of them is immoral, and if you don't agree with me already then I don't see the point of explaining." It's fine if you want to hold that opinion. However, someone wrote a comment disagreeing with that point of view, and you've attempted to rebut it. People write comments on HN because they like to analyze and understand, but your comments don't include more than a pure opinion on your part that one of these behaviors is wrong without saying why. It's not very constructive to share an opinion without being willing to explain why you think it, especially given that you responded to people who sought to discuss it.
I think a strong argument was made against your point. I will restate it: "Governments have the ability to levy taxes. If they need money they should levy a tax. It's that simple. There is no 'right amount' that a company should be paying that is more than the law requires them to pay."
I think that's a pretty good point - don't you? What is your argument for why companies should pay more tax than they're required to pay? You seem to believe that there's some morally correct amount of tax that companies are morally obligated to pay, other than the amount specified by law, but you haven't provided a justification for why that is so, or for determining what that amount is. You have just said that corporate tax avoidance is different (in an unstated way) from individual tax avoidance. Even if we agreed that they're different in many significant ways, the morality or immorality of tax avoidance does not automatically follow from recognition of differences.
You could articulate your point better by starting with, "It's immoral for corporations to seek to lower their tax burden because..." and then follow up by explaining, "It's still moral for individuals and sole proprietors to seek to lower their tax burden because ... " It would illustrate the issue much better to explain what the essential difference is, and why that difference leads to it being immoral. What are the criteria for tax avoidance in an organization or company to be immoral?
Also, I didn't express myself in an insulting way. You've edited this comment a few times now, and it's cool to just stick with the actual topic. I made no insults.
No it doesn't. It implies that the correct fix is to eliminate tax loopholes, not attempting to guilt a corporation into paying more, which is about as effective as guilting the sun into cooling down.
Are you arguing that companies have a responsibility to change laws to maximize their profits? If a company could get a law passed that let them, say, remove all environmental restrictions, are you arguing that they should do that?
Do their fiduciary responsibilities trump their social ones?
If a company attempts to abolish environmental restrictions, in order to, say, get to sell food with carcinogenic substances, and in that way make more money — then one viewpoint can be, that the company attempts to make money by killing people. I.e. attempted murder.
Therefore the executives and people at the company, responsible for lobbying / bribing politicians, in order to remove all environmental restrictions so that the company can sell poisonous food — they should go to prison.
Right now I think that's what I wish would happen.
Tax evasion (= money "only"), though, is very different from removing environmental restrictions (= killing people).
Frankly, in this picture you've painted, I'm not sure what the point of this bribe accepting party is. This is like having a body guard that might shoot you if there's a higher bidder. The whole point of the body guard is to protect you from killers, but now he's shopping around for contracts on your head. It's almost like the State having a monopoly on violence is paradoxical to it's alleged end goal.
Imagine a company and a few lawmakers that via bribes/lobbying remove regulations around asbestos (which is very carcinogenic) and start building houses with asbestos (because asbestos is inexpensive). Now people are going to die in cancer, almost for sure. The company and lawmakers are, in my opinion, killing people to make money. So, they should go to prison.
So I think I want laws that prevent companies _and_ politicians/lawmakers from suggesting-to-remove and removing important environmental restrictions meant to save people's lives.
Perhaps it sounds weird with laws about what regulations/laws might be canceled. Some kind of "meta laws". One way to think about it, could be a defense-in-depth. Now it gets even harder for some evil company, to make money by destroying the environment & hurting people.
I'm not sure all this would work out well in practice though.
Dude. I just want you to consider that your relationship with said bodyguard is abusive and preventing you from thinking straight. And said bodyguard will never care about you more than the money his higher up friends will provide. I know this bodyguard told you a lot of lies, about always being there for you. About protecting and serving. Sorry dude, it's lip service. The bodyguard works for the highest bidder and the highest bidder isn't you or me.
The solution?? Higher a real god damn bodyguard! One with a collateralized contract and reliable arbitrator of your mutual choosing. Turns out social contracts aren't worth the imaginary paper they're written on.
Still you can bet the activists would use our murder charge approach to attack glyphosate manufacturers, not beer manufacturers.
Actually personally I didn't have in mind the possibly causes cancer category. I had in mind more obviously dangerous things like asbestos, and something that was in heavy use in Europe like 30? 50? years ago but then got forbidden because it resulted in severe birth defects. [Edit: I think it's called Thalidomide, was sold as a drug named Contergan]
Some activists do "attack" beer manufacturers :-) (I found out when googling for "beer carcinogens"). And this particular beer manufacturer did apparently listen to what people said, and removed some carcinogenic caramel coloring from a beer. http://organics.org/8-beers-that-you-should-stop-drinking-im...
But NGO activism does not attack just the actually dangerous things; it attacks things that can be used to raise money.
Lawmakers exist specifically to serve the public good. If they are allowing lobbyists to affect this responsibility, then they should be voted out of office.
So yes, corporations that can afford to do so have a responsibility to try to get laws passed that favor them, and elected lawmakers have a responsibility to the public to ensure the laws that they pass are in the public interest.
Doesn't matter -- when the principals signed documents agreeing to incorporate, they simultaneously agreed to abide by the what the law says in regard to paying taxes due as the law requires. If they thought these laws were "unethical"... well, that was their chance to make a principled stand against them.
If you have an argument that describes how taxing profits is unethical in contemporary society, as they are legislated by elected representatives, I'm sure there are others beside me who'd love to read it.
But this is not the context we are talking about here. Spain is part of the EU and the so called "1st" world.
I'm not sure if you're being tongue in cheek or not, but the 1st world may have less repression and human rights violations but it doesn't have none. And member states have invaded other countries in recent memory, have been involved in torture, institutional racism, etc.
0: http://michael-hudson.com/2016/04/laundering-havens-for-war-...
Another example of this stupidity by governments is making gambling illegal due to "morals", and then hosting a government-run lottery. Clearly their motives are not morals, but money.
Get involved with politics and get the laws changed. In so many of these cases, the laws are so poorly written that you could drive a truck through them.
I'll bet the anything Google did wrong here (legally) is minor at the most. Check back in a year and down-vote me if I'm wrong.
If the gov't wants to put an end to this behavior, they can. They just need to change the laws.
When a bunch of companies start misusing tax laws the tax authorities will tell them that it's wrong, announce how they'll regulate that bit of tax law in future, and reclaim a bit of unpaid tax. The companies can challenge it in court if they wish.
Non-payment of tax exists on a scale, with normal and expected tax planning at one end, probably legal (the accountants and lawyers claim it is) tax avoidance through to outright tax evasion.
These companies play in an absolutely different league than employees, self employed and small companies in Europe where they make you pay strictly all the taxes to mantain our social structure. They have big teams of lawyers, financial experts and advisors specialized in tax havens just to make grow their revenues in billions avoiding to pay taxes in the countries they have presence.
Totally unfair for regular people like me.
http://www.uspirgedfund.org/reports/usp/offshore-shell-games...