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A comment on 5 Completely Insane Facts About the Apple Approach to Taxes. Parent comment

Re:5 Completely Insane Facts About the Apple Approach to Taxes by coldtea on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @10:59AM (#5751304)
>This article, and others like it, imply that what Apple is doing is unethical. However, the opposite is true: it would be negligent for Apple not to do this. Apple's responsibility is to its shareholders, and that responsibity is to maximize profits.

Ethical, to have a meaning in the common sense, has to refer to "the society as a whole" -- not to whom you have a "responsibility to".

A gang member also has a responsibility to his gang members (e.g to maximize profit and get rid of people causing trouble there too). That doesn't make his crimes "ethical".

So, no, it can be legal and not ethical. Finding corner cases to side-step the spirit of the law is not regarded "ethical" in any place I know of.

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Re:5 Completely Insane Facts About the Apple Approach to Taxes by snowwrestler on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @11:41AM (#5751559)
Your gang metaphor makes no sense because Apple is not committing any crimes.

A better metaphor would be a U.S. citizen who takes the IRS standard deduction even though they know that their itemized deductions would be less. Is that unethical?

What about people who use TurboTax software, which helps them find deductions that they would not have otherwise known about? Is that unethical?

In addition, consider the society of nations as a whole. The U.S. alone among developed nations expects its companies to pay U.S. taxes on profits earned globally. If Apple were a French, Dutch, English, German, etc. company then this conversation would not even be happening. They would just pay the local tax rate and then repatriate the remaining earnings.

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