If a child in a nursery grabs away another child's juice box for themselves, they haven't broken any law, but it's still theft. If an autocratic government passes a law allowing it to seize the assets of a minority group, it's still theft. If a bank exploits legal loopholes to take billions of taxpayer's money, it's theft, regardless of whether it's legal.
That is what the article is about, claiming the same tax rebate for the legal fiction that there are 2 simultaneous owners of a stock due to a short sale.
If you allow that, why not let me sell your short sale short, and then sell that short so that there are 8,16, or 32Billion rebates to be had.
Legal fiction is the key... and yes, they let lobbyists rewrite the law promising they wouldn't exploit the new one, but they were caught doing it again (on the excluded foreign accounts).
> This loophole seemingly allows you to take back more than you paid in the first place.
To this?
> This is theft.
Because by itself, this logic would seem to include all welfare recipients - they also take more than they pay. You probably didn't mean to call them theives though; so, you probably have more precise criteria to calling someone a thief than just "he takes back more than he pays".
This loophole seemingly allows you to take back more than you paid in the first place. This is theft.