> likely to face jail time for being derelict in their fiduciary duties if they don’t maximize profits

This is trotted out every single time and is a gross misrepresentation of Ford V Dodge and in any case cannot result in jail time.

> But as long as it’s legal corporate figure heads are likely to face jail time for being derelict in their fiduciary duties if they don’t maximize profits.

This is extremely untrue. Apple themselves do a whole spiel about this when they talk about their environmental practices.

You can totally choose to not try to minimize your tax bill agressively. hundreds of thousands of businesses do this every year (if only by not having the army of lawyers and accountants and lobbyists that Apple does)

"It's legal" doesn't make it moral or ethical, and if you don't have a more nuanced defense of it we're totally within our right to judge Apple for it.

The tax codes in various nations needs to catch up. There’s no reason for Apple to pay any more tax than it needs to legally under the law. The same goes for Apple. I go out of my way to hold onto receipts and the like to be able to deduct all I can. I offer to do everything I can to fix even the smallest lightbulb going out at my small little rental so that I can deduct that. Apple is just doing all this on a much bigger scale.

There’s new efforts to simplify the code and make it easier to ensure that businesses like Apple and Amazon and others have some tax to pay with the EU internet giants tax of something like 3% on receipts made in the EU is just taxed. Period. That for example could be a viable hedge against things like moving revenue generation to other countries.

Step one of fixing bad laws, or abused loopholes in existing laws is demonstrating the extent to which it's being abused. That way we can equate the lost tax revenue into something more identifiable. Stories like this give us the evidence we need that something in our tax laws isn't working.

These figures published are part of the public record of the company.