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by jiveturkey 2355 days ago
> Not Google being good

That goes without saying. What does need to be said is that anti-Google implications should not be taken from this statement.

1. The prior and new behavior is neither good nor bad.

2. That only Google does this is, and should be singled out, is a bit of pitchfork-ism (to be fair, from the article, not your comment). Lots of companies do this and lots of companies will need to stop doing it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/apple-taxes-jersey....

1 comments

> 1. The prior and new behavior is neither good nor bad.

That depends from which point of view you're looking at it. Technically according to the law? All good. Ethically? Different people will have different opinions, but many would agree that it's bad behaviour. You're a law abiding leech on society, but you're still a leech.

You are still arguing good or bad! I say, it's completely amoral.

Google (and the scores of others doing this) are smart, clever, and correct for taking advantage of loopholes like this. If it is in fact legal but unethical, it's easily addressed by Congress. Expecting companies to self-regulate their tax burden is foolish. Google, Apple and the rest are not "public benefit companies" with the declared benefit of maximizing their tax burden.

'Leech' as well is quite a strong word, most unjustified IMHO.

ps. It's not Google/Apple/etc themselves that find these loopholes; it's outsourced specialists.