[marrs]

But Apple are paying their taxes.

[coldtea]

No, they use every trick in the book not to, ending up paying less than your local frozen yogurt place (exaggerating a little, but still).

[fredoliveira]

See but they do pay their taxes. They just use loopholes to pay less taxes.

[lomnakkus]

That's basically a distinction without meaning.

The whole reason for taxes is that it helps the collective -- sometimes at the expense of the individual.

[Frondo]

Let me ask you then, do you think it's right that the tax burden is on those locally-run frozen yogurt places, over the extremely well-off multinationals like Apple? Is that the way you want to see the world run?

[fredoliveira]

Of course I don't think it's right. I was only making the point of what they do is not skip paying taxes, but effectively trick the financial system into paying as little as they can.

[sigzero]

I don't think he is saying that at all. Of course Apple is going to use every loophole they find. They are a business and that business is making money. The only way to fix it is to remove the loopholes.

[coldtea]

>The only way to fix it is to remove the loopholes.

Or you know, to have the people running the business have a sense of ethics.

[Frondo]

Well, yeah. Like, if your company is headquartered in Cupertino, maybe then act like it when tax time comes and pay your US and California taxes.

Setting up a nesting doll stack of shell corporations to dodge all that is, right now, legal, but is that the world I'd want to have a hand in building? Nope.

[hugh4]

Ethically your responsibility is to the shareholders who have given you their money to invest, not to some random government.

The governments of the world aren't doing a good enough job with the money I'm already giving them for me to start thinking about donating more.

[geodel]

So the problem is existence of the book of tricks. Apple did not write it.

[saiya-jin]

general principle was there before apple. but for sure they do cook a 'book' or two, as one of the most wealthy companies in the world, without any strong sense of morality (not saying lack of it, just usual corporation as many others).

If you can invest for example 500 millions USD in bribes to gain 5 billions per year in not paying taxes, that's a damn easy decision for some CEO. And those fictional 500 millions will get you quite far in these times, where lobbyists in capital cities in both EU and US are not even illegal (in my opinion should be shot in sight), but just part of daily life.

[throwaway2048]

except apple (and companies like it) very much do "write the book" via lobbying.

[Marazan]

Yes they did. they literally negotiated a deal with the Irish government to get the tax structure they wanted for their European operations.