On the other hand, for every $100 google pays in taxes, $23.2 will be given to unproductive old people and $14.8 will be given to unproductive non-old people.

It's a fallacy to focus solely on the desirable components of government spending. The lions share of taxes are simply transfers from productive people to unproductive people. If Google wants to avoid this, I see nothing wrong with that.

When someone above asked "Why would Google want to pay a higher tax rate?" I thought, they would if it was in their best interest- I think we all agree on this.

Now here is the crazy part of my post- A company like Google which could conceivably bring in billions of dollars by changing its tax setup, should have some bargaining power. I don't think anything like this exists anywhere, but wouldn't it be cool if Google could get lawmakers to state that x% of Google's tax dollars will set up schools that focused on teaching 'gifted' children technology? And y% pays for technology infrastructure? Wouldn't that be fukken sweet? It would give Google an incentive to keep money in the USA, give back to what gave birth to it, reduce its burden of finding and educating new hires, reduce it's burden of setting up infrastructure, and benefit society across the board without having to wait for a some Google Billionaire to have a ethical epiphany in his old age and attempt philanthropy.

Without going into what proportion of spending might directly benefit Google, I do agree with you. Return on tax revenue is nowhere close to 1:1 nor is it being spent optimally.

But Google does not decide how that money is allotted. They can't say "I'm only paying 25% because I only approve of 25% of expenditures." When they limit their exposure to 25% of what it might be (paying 4% instead of 20%) they're still cutting the desirable spending to 25% of its budget.

So they're still strangling those things they benefit from.

And if the giants generations before Google had done the same, one wonders whether the component technologies and projects and research that Google built from would have been part of the lucky 25% of spending that survived inevitable cuts?

I'm just pointing out that if google limits their exposure to 25% of what it might be, they are still paying for all the services they use and far more. They pay not be paying for all the services you want them to pay for, but that isn't the same thing.

I'm also pointing out that it's not quite honest to list only the useful government services, when they are dwarfed by wealth transfers. That's a tactic worthy of congress, similar to naming a law "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes" (where "other purposes" == bank bailouts).

You just need to be consistent. Google has gotten a lot of benefits out of their "Do No Evil" motto; in my mind, they are held to a higher standard than GE or IBM.

I think the issue that people are disagreeing on here is who would make the better use of money: Google or a government? If Google paid $1 million more in taxes, would that be a net benefit or detriment to society? Google can do good things with that money, and so can a government. But which one can give higher marginal utility?

And those employees pay more taxes because they draw high salaries paid to them by Google, which they could not have gotten without their education.