[matt4077]

This supposed legal responsibility to be cut-throat capitalists is somewhat mythical. You can't just give money away without justification. But management has extremely wide discretion in their decision-making. Almost all companies donate to non-profits, for example. Yes, you can argue that it is good for PR. But that argument also works for anything else that someone, somewhere, would consider "ethical behaviour".

Specifically for this case: there is no obligation to establish a super-complicated tax structure to lower your tax rate to 0.5%. Otherwise, 498 of the Fortune 500 would run afoul of it.

We probably can't rely on ethics, or, to use the term I prefer, "integrity" (doing the right thing even when nobody is looking). But that doesn't mean that we cannot fault companies for behaving unethically. If we expect people not to always exploit each others weaknesses in the pursuit of money, why not expect the same from companies? Corporations are people, after all.