News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of profit into tax havens. Parent comment

Re:Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of prof... by DanBC on Sunday August 04, 2019 @02:24PM (#20608303)
Often with complex tax schemes we don't know if they're legal or not because they haven't been tested in courts.

Some governments focus on low-hanging fruit or on flagrant tax evasion. They don't want a long running court case costing millions with an uncertain outcome.

So we never get to find out whether this scheme is legal avoidance or illegal evasion.

But, even if it's legal avoidance: I pay my tax. Why shouldn't this huge company who seeks to benefit from tax-payer funded institutions also pay their tax?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of prof... by ryanlol on Sunday August 04, 2019 @03:44PM (#20608798)
So, what exactly stops the politicians from writing simple and clear tax laws?

It wouldn’t be hard for the lawmakers to eliminate this uncertainty, they just want to remain competitive.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of prof... by ArnoVW on Sunday August 04, 2019 @05:44PM (#20609405)
Don't know the particular tax law in question, but perhaps it would help you if you thought you of lawmaking as making software (in fact in French the word for law is 'code')

Everything you code has to be coherent, requirements change, and when they do it is hard to get everyone to agree on the details. You have 200 years of legacy code, have to be compatible with other states and countries, have to support all possible edge cases, and your code is interpreted not by a computer but by a human.

Are there broken laws? Sure. Is it easy to make good ones? Not so sure.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of prof... by 9HZZRfNlpR on Sunday August 04, 2019 @05:33PM (#20609356)
I've always wondered what about the spirit of the law/contract in these cases?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Activision Blizzard has moved billions of dollars of prof... by 0xcde4c3db on Sunday August 04, 2019 @02:34PM (#20608375)
Such schemes are sometimes described with the tongue-in-cheek term "tax avoision".
[ Parent | on HN ]