What if "being good" means "no legal arbitrage" and "no jurisdiction shopping"? What if it means "not really, really going out of your way to find ways to pay less tax, including by buying legislation"?
> means intentionally paying more tax than legally obligated
You have an unusual definition of “legally obligated” if you feel they were 100% following the law doing this. Sure, it used to be legal in Ireland, but intentionally moving IP to claim revenue in a different tax jurisdiction than where the money was earned was a legal grey area at best.
It was explicitly, intentionally legal. Ireland enacted these laws so companies like google would move IP and high paying jobs to Ireland. And the Irish economy benefitted from it.
You can’t have a fair discussion of the ethics of this scenario without considering the “tax havens” themselves. Shouldn’t a sovereign country like Ireland have the right to enact laws that benefit its economy? For small jurisdictions like the caymans, what looks like a “tax haven” to outsiders is actually a huge boon to their economy and objectively good for their citizens.
I didn’t claim that it was not legal in Ireland, as that’s not the point. Google (and others like Apple) are multi-national companies which means they might not be following the letter, let alone the intent, of the law in other jurisdictions in which they do business by using this loophole. It’s definitively a legal grey area and everyone skilled in international tax law I’ve read on the topic agree. So saying it’s flat out legal everywhere is glossing over important considerations, and at best comes off naive.