[HeavenFox]

There's also the Ford vs Chicken Tax; basically U.S. import tariff for passenger van is 2.5% and cargo van is 25%, so Ford, which manufactured their Transit van in Turkey, installed seats in factory and stripped the seats once they arrived in the U.S.

Now looks like they are in trouble for this scheme.

https://jalopnik.com/ford-faces-potential-1-3-billion-fine-f...

(And why it's called Chicken Tax is another fascinating story...)

[bentcorner]

There's also the infamous Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States case where Marvel Comics argued that their X-Men toys where "nonhuman toys" and not dolls to avoid an import tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...

The irony is that in the X-Men universe, the X-Men fight for a unification of mutants and humans.

[autoexec]

Still, technically true though I'd think. Mutants aren't human. The X-Gene makes them "Homo sapiens superior" and distinguishes them from humans who were mutated by other means (radiation, spider bites, etc). Do X-men want to erase the distinction or do they just want peaceful coexistence between the two species?

[quietbritishjim]

I'm not saying this would affect a court ruling, but as a point of curiosity: technically "human" means the homo genus, not just the sapiens species. So Neanderthals for example, or homo erectus, are both human. The X-men would be human too, if they were indeed homo sapiens superior.

[gumby]

> or do they just want peaceful coexistence between the two species?

Are they truly speciated or can they interbreed producing fertile offspring?

"Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" doesn't really address this as Superman is not a member of genus homo.

[autoexec]

Mutants and humans can produce fertile offspring, but hybrids aren't impossible across species just uncommon. Bison and cattle, or grizzlies and polar bears are examples. Where we divide groups into "species" is pretty murky. I'm sure somewhere there has to be a biologist who loves comics enough to sort all this stuff out for us. Then again, I've seen Neanderthals called both a subspecies and a separate species of human too so they should probably sort that one out first.

[gumby]

Given that every child is different from either parent (not only by half the chromosomes but transcription errors and epigenic triggers) what defines a mutatant vs “stock”?

[autoexec]

For Marvel, mutants are those with an X-Gene, but in biology we tend to call something a mutant when an error in DNA causes something we wouldn't normally see (well outside of typical variation). We've all got screwed up DNA in us, but mutants are the ones who end up with really noticeable differences. That could apply to a lot of humans walking around today (albinos for example), but I guess it's considered impolite to call them mutants.

[cgriswald]

As species boundaries go, human/mutant is incredibly arbitrary. Either a mutant or a human can be created from a pairing of human-human, mutant-human, or mutant-mutant. It would be like classifying blonde people as a different species.

[vba616]

I realize this is more about the X-men universe, but the statement "mutants aren't human" bugs me.

The human body accumulates on the order of 10 quadrillion uncorrected mutations per day, supposedly:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC47258/

(I'm assuming 30 trillion cells and that ~2.7% of mutations go uncorrected based on the rat figures mentioned)

[jrockway]

Wow. I hope the government loses their lawsuit here. Customs & Border Protection should have absolutely no jurisdiction over what an item is used for once it enters the country.

[colejohnson66]

Ford lost in 2019. An appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.[0] My non-lawyer understand of the issue wasn’t so much that they were avoiding a tariff (“tariff engineering”), but that they were removing the seats upon entry. In contrast with the BRAT where the dummy seats were still there when sold.

[0]: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/06/03/ford-transit-connect-imp...

[etskinner]

I wonder if they could, in theory, sell you the car for 150% of it's final price (so that they seats are there when sold), then buy back the seats immediately for 50% of its price. The invoice would say something like: Car with passenger seats: $15,000; Passenger seat buyback: $5,000; Total after buyback: $10,000.

That way everyone gets what they want, and they've technically sold it with the seats still installed.

[kentonv]

Law isn't interpreted by computers, it is interpreted by human judges, who generally aren't impressed by such hacks (though you might get lucky).

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, when the law allows additional sanction for willful/knowing violation, courts will not only often see through your “clever hack”, but also see it as evidence of deliberate wrongdoing.

[vba616]

Also see: structuring.

You have to report behavior X, and if you deliberately don't do behavior X to avoid reporting it, that's a crime too!

Let's see you put that on the blockchain...

[colejohnson66]

See also: the $10k reporting threshold for banks. Deliberately doing smaller transfers to avoid the reporting threshold can be illegal (depending on intent), and the banks are legally mandated to report suspicious activity (such as that) as well.

[shawnz]

Aren't the seats themselves already a "hack"?

[kentonv]

Yes. Seems like Subaru got lucky and Ford didn't.

[babypuncher]

Frankly I think our justice system should be less tolerant of "hacks" like this. They clearly violate the intent of the law, even if technically following it to the letter.

[cgriswald]

I prefer judges and lawyers interpret what the law says, not what they believe lawmakers meant to say. It is lawmakers responsibility to craft quality laws. Such hacks expose weaknesses in the laws as written.

Edit: ...when successful.

[JohnBooty]

Ideally: sure!

In reality: are you a software engineer? Or do you know one? Surely you (or they) have experienced how difficult it is to write code that manages even a small number of inputs? Even 10 different yes/no inputs give you 1,024 possibilities.

Now imagine writing laws to precisely cover an effectively infinite number of possibilities, many of which don't exist at the time the law is written, and expecting the laws to cover these new situations and variables with absolute certainty and unambiguity. And unlike software, you can't just push a commit to prod to fix the problems as they pop up. It's a really long process, because democracy.

It's not happening, no more than you'd be able to handle a piece of software that took some infinite and random number and variety of inputs and did something useful with them.

We should, as you say, write "quality" laws to the best of our ability but there will always been a sizable human element to the interpretation of law.

[dataflow]

> It is lawmakers responsibility to craft quality laws.

Judging by how hard it is for programmers to write bug-free instructions for literal computers, I'm not sure your expectation of flawless legislation is something realistic for mere mortals.

[noizejoy]

And I prefer to see judges and lawyers as safety valves for mitigating badly written legislation.

[shuntress]

It is a judge's responsibility to literally judge whether a given application of the law is appropriate.

This encompasses every possible input including "what they believe lawmakers meant to say".

Edit: To get out in front of the obvious "Well what about when a judge just decides to do whatever they want??" response, I will say: That is why tradition, precedent, checks & balances, voting rights, and institutional trust all matter.

[8note]

I don't think the writing is the authority for what the law is for.

Judges are there to make the boundaries clear for the greyzone on what's not written down

The world is too complex to get perfect laws written. You're always going to miss weird edge cases in both directions

[orangecat]

Absolutely not. Throwing people in prison who were explicitly obeying the law as written is a terrible road to go down.

[8note]

The law as written is indescript.

Ate they following things specifically as the law said they're supposed to, or hacking some edge case that isn't explicitly called out?

[WalterBright]

That would return us from the rule of law back to the rule of men. History hasn't been kind to the rule of men.

[noizejoy]

While I agree with your well intentioned sentiment, “intent” is even more nebulous and arguable.

[908B64B197]

Or have the dealerships take care of the aftermarket conversion.

Ford should only have issued a guide to independent dealers and repair centers on how to do a conversion between cargo and passenger (and made sure both were possible) but only import the passenger version into the country.

Then it's murkier, because not all dealerships would offer it and the customer isn't buying it from Ford, he's getting an independent dealer to install additional things (or remove) from the vehicle.

[laurent92]

Isn’t a lot of securization necessary for two more seats? Adding floor reinforcements, seatbelts, and more importantly, passing the crash tests with two more seats?

[thaeli]

They have to do that for the passenger version of the van anyway.

[bjustin]

And collect tax on $20,000 in sales instead of $10,000? Maybe they would be happy if car companies used this scheme.

[colejohnson66]

Then the government would collect income tax from the owner on that rebate as well, no? Seems like an expensive operation.

[R0b0t1]

This doesn't really assuage his concern. The government is still dictating what you do with items.

CBP is one of the worst infringers upon personal rights, I wouldn't defend them.

[dragonwriter]

> The government is still dictating what you do with items.

Well, no, they are dictating what taxes you owe based on intent, and using consistent patterns of behavior as evidence of ongoing intent.

This isn't Ford changing their mind about the purpose of the vehicle after importing them.

[babypuncher]

They aren't telling you what you can do with your items. They are telling you what taxes you owe based on the intended function of said item.

[R0b0t1]

The power to tax is the power to destroy. The same overzealous power they have to tell me what my usage intent was also allows them to totally ban items that aren't actually banned.

[nathanvanfleet]

So in your view they just felt like adding seats and then removing them later?

[harles]

I’d expect some were also sold with the seats, they just changed the default config. I wonder what the ratio was though.

[tshaddox]

> Customs & Border Protection should have absolutely no jurisdiction over what an item is used for once it enters the country.

I mean, that's the whole point of the import tariff law, so if the CBP has jurisdiction to enforce tariff law, surely how the item is used (or at least how the item is intended to be used or how the item can reasonably be expected to be used) is the primary factor to consider.

[khuey]

Why? Borders are full of rules of the form "X can cross for purpose A but not for purpose B" for both people and goods.

[jrockway]

How long does the rule apply for? If someone removes seats from their van, is that tax evasion? What if it's temporary? If an individual can do it, why not Ford?

The problem I have here is how easy it is to avoid the tax. CBP shouldn't have any jurisdiction over car modifications and repairs; that responsibility falls to different agencies.

[fredoralive]

It seems that the issue was that Ford, the importer, changed the class of vehicle between import and being sold inside the US. Presumably if you aren't the importer you can go wild (IANAL).

[jrockway]

Yeah, so they're really just getting punished for not dotting their is and crossing their ts. They could create a subsidiary with the same board of directors as Ford that they sell the cars to, and then the subsidiary does the dirty work of repurposing the cars from passenger vehicles to cargo vehicles. They skipped paying the $100 corporate registration fee, so now they're on the hook for a billion dollar fine that would have been legal if they added another company to the mix? Give me a break.

[brewdad]

Except that now those vehicles are used and may be more difficult to sell again. If you don't go through the trouble of retitling them, then clearly they were never really sold and the courts will see right through this scheme.

[gowld]

You are arguing that because it is possible to break the law and escape on a technicality, the law is invalid in all cases.

[lazide]

Probably not - that kind of setup gets seen through by judges all the time.

The phrase you’re looking for is ‘criminal conspiracy’

[philjohn]

No, they're being punished for evading duty with a loophole, aware that it's a loophole.

[beerandt]

No- the norm is for things to be imported, then combined or modified and sold as a new product, without paying the import tax based on the new product.

If import tax on a cpu is x, and motherboard is y, should you have to pay computer import tax z if you build and sell PCs? After all, what imported cpus and motherboards aren't destined to be assembled computers?

[fredoralive]

I was more talking about this particular case, where it seems it was judged that Ford didn't make a new product out of imported parts, but importing a finished vehicle as one thing, and selling it as another after minor modification.

It is a more normal way around these sorts of tariffs to import a vehicle as a kit of parts (CKD / "Complete knocked down"), and perform some level of final assembly in the end country. The sort of rules you talk about apply then, you pay the car parts import rate on the kit, not the (presumably higher) rate for a complete car[1].

[1] Or otherwise avoid whatever other protectionist measures mean you can't just import a fully built car.

[AnimalMuppet]

The courts tend to take a dim view of "clever hacks" to get around the law, where the intent is clearly to circumvent the law and the action has no other purpose. They don't always rule that way. But if you pull this kind of stunt, you risk the court saying, "Very clever. No."

[gowld]

Corporate accounting is annindustry that only exist as "clever hacks". It usually works, unless you are politically out of favor.

[babypuncher]

The rule applies to the entity responsible for importing the item. Since Ford was importing the vehicle and then altering it immediately afterwards to escape the tax, they are in the wrong. If they instead sold it as-is to a customer, and the customer then made the modification themselves, it wouldn't be a problem.

[KarlKemp]

The fact I can’t tell you the individual grain of sand that makes the difference does not imply that the concept of a “sand beach” is meaningless.

[mc32]

It was pretty transparent that they did that to circumvent regulation.

Imagine Coca-Cola getting clearance for importing coca leaves for flavoring but then instead sells it to a third party who processes it for something else.

[vba616]

At least decades ago when I first read about it, it was said that the third party, a company called the Stepan Co., imports the coca leaves, removes the cocaine, and sends the leaves to Coca-Cola and the cocaine to Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.

https://apnews.com/article/af06f48660bf613e12d411a8f4dd4784

[notch656a]

Am I the only one that sees no problem with that? Why the hell should coca-cola be responsible for what someone else does with coca leaves?

[rtpg]

It's basically about lying. Coca-Cola says "I am going to do X so let me import this", while intending to actually do Y. Meanwhile, the gov't is like "well in principle we don't want people importing this because of Y but we'll make exceptions if it's for X"

And like many rules, it's not necessarily about stopping 100% of everything all the time, but about preventing enough of it so that we don't have some problem.

In the universe in which you agree X is fine but Y is not, and that there is some sort of proof that Coca-Cola knows what is going on, it seems really obvious that Coca-Cola is responsible!

[JohnBooty]

I mean, we (ideally) pass laws to benefit society.

I'm not somebody who really loves rules and regulations and I'll be the first person to say that America's "war on drugs" has been an utter disaster in multiple ways.

But, generally speaking, flooding a country with cocaine is not what most of us would call beneficial to society.

If you don't think that we should have a society and/or laws, cool, that's another discussion. But if you accept the premise that we should have laws, controlling the flow of industrial quantities of coca leaves seems like the good kind of law.

I mean, I guess we could just let Coca-Cola import metric tons of coca leaves, sell them to whoever the fuck they want, and then just... prosecute the people who do bad things with them? I think we would find that orders of magnitude more work and orders of magnitude less effective. There would be a large cost to society, and nobody wins except Coca-Cola, really.

[vba616]

>I mean, I guess we could just let Coca-Cola import metric tons of coca leaves, sell them to whoever the fuck they want, and then just... prosecute the people who do bad things with them?

Yes? Basically?

(1988)

"Workers at the Stepan Co. plant, the nation’s only legal importer of cocaine, must undergo strict background checks, and agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency frequently visit, said plant manager John O’Brien.

DEA spokesman Milton Smilek in Newark said there haven’t been any security problems at the plant just west of New York City. He said it processes hundreds of tons of cocaine each year."

This is where Coca-Cola is said to get its flavoring from.

[8note]

You are responsible for who you sell things to.

At worst, you can imagine selling a full nuclear bomb to Al kaeda, then being surprised pikachu when they use it to blow up IAD

[michaelmrose]

Presumably because the would logically accept such a duty as an alternative to the government telling them they aren't allowed to import it at all.

[RC_ITR]

It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is.

Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company?

Even moreso, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford lobbied FOR those laws before changing its mind in where to produce a particular sku

[jrockway]

It sounds like the age-old market segmentation thing. People driving their kids to soccer practice don't make money with their vans, so they'll notice the higher price (and if they find out their congresscritter was responsible, they'll vote for a different one). Meanwhile, cargo vans are used to make money, so the users can bear the extra cost. There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here; individuals can vote, and so they have lower taxes than businesses, which can't vote. (It's too bad that Ford doesn't dump the seats they take out of the van into Boston Harbor! Someone would probably still get the reference.)

It's the same game that SaaS companies play. Everything is free until you want SSO, then it's $30,000 a year. If you need SSO, you can afford it.

Personally, I hate this in both cases. I think we could save everyone a lot of time if every vendor you did business with just grabbed you by the ankles and flipped you upside down and took whatever money fell out of your pocket. Why tiptoe around what they really want...

[titusjohnson]

> There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here; individuals can vote, and so they have lower taxes than businesses, which can't vote.

I'm confused about this statement. Businesses are comprised of individuals, and those individuals (if citizens) can vote. So the business has a vote through the voice of its employees and representation in government through the people employees at a business.

Or are you saying the legal fiction of business personhood should give the business a ... vote? That just sounds like business owners (individuals) getting 2 or more votes then...

[NoboruWataya]

> Or are you saying the legal fiction of business personhood should give the business a ... vote? That just sounds like business owners (individuals) getting 2 or more votes then...

I believe the more common proposal is to resolve the contradiction the other way: remove taxes on corporations, as the individuals comprising the corporations generally already pay taxes. That would be politically quite unpopular, but there is a certain logic to it and it would also make taxes easier to administer and more difficult to avoid. And it doesn't need to be as pro-rich as it sounds - you could just replace corporation taxes with other taxes targeting wealthy individuals, such as a wealth tax or higher income taxes.

[billpg]

The sort of already happens. Over here, businesses don't have to pay sales tax (VAT) on the goods and services they buy, because when they finally sell the item or service to a customer, the sales tax is charged in full.

So while a business doesn't pay sales on the fuel they need to deliver their goods to me, it gets paid in the end because the cost of the fuel is included in the price I pay and the sales tax is levied on the whole purchase price.

(It is a little more complicated than that. Don't sue me.)

[alboy]

>I believe the more common proposal is to resolve the contradiction the other way: remove taxes on corporations, as the individuals comprising the corporations generally already pay taxes.

Without a wealth tax that would just make tax evasion even easier for the ultrawealthy in the usual manner of borrowing against the equity of the stock they own.

[summm]

If at the same time corporations lost their status as legal persons, I'd be very interested in your proposal.

[majormajor]

If we remove the taxes on corporations should we also remove the shield on liability against the owners of the corporation? Why make it more transparent one way but not the other?

[slt2021]

maybe businesses can't vote, but they can buy votes of the congressmen directly.

why go through the hassle of voting and deal with uncertainty whether you voted a right person, when you can just buy with cash whatever law/regulation you need

[gowld]

Would you prefer that only rich people could buy things? Without price discrimination, the market clearing price is higher.

[nickff]

>"Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company?"

Have you read a tariff schedule? They're full of this stuff, which seem to be protections or favors for specific industries. Anti-dumping protections seem similar.

[RC_ITR]

>It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is.

[nickff]

I am not sure it is 'corrupt', though that may be a question of semantics. I didn't mean to disagree with you, just point out how rampant the issue was.

[secabeen]

I don't think it's corrupt exactly, often these details are worked out in deals between the various countries or as retaliation for other unilateral increases. We lower your rate on rice to 6% if you lower our rate on chicken; if you raise your rate on our machine parts to 25%, we'll raise our rate on your cargo vans to 25%. Etc. It's part of the negotiations, and it often has nothing to do with the specifics of the items being tarriffed.

[colejohnson66]

No lobbying involved. It’s the remnants of a tariff war with France and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

[RC_ITR]

The Chicken Wars brought the powerful agricultural lobby in France into direct conflict with the powerful agricultural lobby in the United States. Not surprisingly, France, the largest poultry producer in the EEC, was unwilling to embrace a free trade policy whose benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe. The benefits of protectionism were concentrated in France and the costs were borne by consumers throughout Europe. Indeed, the stakes were sufficiently high that France might have quit the EEC had not French agricultural interests been appeased.

That's from the 'further reading' link on Wikipedia.

[vilaca]

> benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe

The EU has banned poultry meat from the US on psytosanitary grounds for more than two decades.

[Jon_Lowtek]

Which is a lot younger than the chicken tax from the 1960s

For some context: it is about washing chicken meat with chlorine dioxide to kill bacteria, especially salmonella, at the slaughterhouse. It may seem ridicoulous that europeans prefer salmonella to chlorine on their chickens, but european food health and safety argues that the practice is needed in the USA due to the very unsanitary, and therefor cheaper, chicken meat production, whereas europa requires high standards during production instead of washing the end product in chlorine, and is therefore more costly. Some argue this cost difference is the major driver of the ban, and it is not an actual health and safety issue.

[colejohnson66]

Yes, but I meant lobbying from Ford for said tariff as you suggested.

[RC_ITR]

At the same time, the U.S. auto industry was suffering its own trade crisis due to competition from growingly popular foreign cars and trucks. During the early 1960s, sales of Volkswagens surged as America’s love affair with the iconic VW “Bug” coupe and Type 2 van shifted into overdrive. By 1963, the situation got so bad that Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers Union (U.A.W.), threatened a strike that would have halted all U.S. auto production just before the 1964 presidential election.

Running for reelection and aware of the influence the U.A.W. had in Congress and in the minds of voters, President Johnson looked for a way to persuade Reuther’s union not to strike and to support his “Great Society” civil rights agenda. Johnson succeeded on both counts by agreeing to include light trucks in the Chicken Tax.

While U.S. tariffs on other Chicken Tax items have since been rescinded, lobbying efforts by the U.A.W. have kept the tariff on light trucks and utility vans alive. As a result, American-made trucks still dominate sales in the U.S., and some very desirable trucks, like the high-end Australian-made Volkswagen Amorak, are not sold in the United States.

https://www.thoughtco.com/chicken-tax-4159747

[drzaiusapelord]

I find it incredible that people think the government does things like this "just because." It do so because its capitalist masters demand it. Of course this is lobbying driven. The government in a capitalist society exists almost solely to bring the agenda of lobbyists into the legislature by any means possible be it via cash contributions, manufacturing consent via the corporatist media, riling people up via the pulpit, fixing elections, demonizing unrelated minority groups, threatening or even attempting coups, blocking the teaching of certain subjects in school, assassination, etc.

Its incredible to me that there's an entire political identity that borderline denies any of this happens, and instead the government itself is somehow naturally corrupt but business and the lobbying and capital owning class are all angels and saints. Everyday conservatism buys into this fallacy fairly well and this dishonesty seems to be the core of libertarianism.

Explaining this concept to some people feels like how I would imagine explaining water to fish must be. We're just so surrounded by it and it defines so much of our culture, that you can fail to see if you choose. You can just call everything government corruption from cradle to grave without asking about the source and motivation of that corruption. You can swim your whole life and never wonder why you're wet.

[gamblor956]

The issue was that the seats were only added for the purposes of evading tax, and the tax evasive purpose was established by Ford systematically removing the seats prior to sale.

Ford would have been fine if they had kept the seats in the car until they were sold and left it up to the customer to remove the seats. (This would not have affected the customer, tax-wise, since the import duty is paid by Ford, and by the time the customer has removed the seats, they have already paid the sales tax on the vehicle.)

[throwawaylinux]

I've always been lead to believe the intent of a law or regulation is what matters in the eyes of a court.

The Subaru case probably violates the intent as well but maybe that would be a lot harder to prove. But the Ford case they clearly conspired to violate the intent. Which, if "intent" really is the important thing, I suppose should have lead to criminal charges too.

I suppose intent probably matters a bit more when it's the little guy on the receiving end of it.

[friedturkey]

I sincerely hope Ford gets hit hard and pays back all the profits they made from their tax dodging scheme plus penalties.

I'm beyond tired of massive corporations sending jobs to other countries, pretending to care about their own country and lying about being made locally, and dodging taxes. Ford hit all three here.

[db65edfc7996]

Planet Money did[0] a story about the Chicken Tax.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/25/511663527/epis...

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Perhaps a more relevant and legally robust example is the Mercedes Benz Sprinter, which is manufactured in Germany, but US-bound vehicles have various parts removed before shipping. A facility in NC reassembles the vehicles (the removed parts are shipped with the van) once they arrive, which reduces or eliminates the tax.

[notmercedespr]

Bit off, this was done near Charleston, SC as recently as a few years ago but has since transitioned to full manufacturing.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

How right you are!

[notch656a]

I'm guessing they're only trouble because they took the seats out. Probably cheaper just to leave them in, and sell along with wrench to remove them 'in case it's needed for repair.' A friendly source will publish in a trade magazine it's the same van after 12 minutes to remove the seats, and the scheme will continue.

[fredoralive]

According to an article about it[1], Ford also removed / panelled in various windows as well, so conversion probably isn't as trivially DIYable as just removing some token seats.

Although I suppose van buyers are slightly more likely to know someone with a welding torch and some steel sheets than the average person, so perhaps they missed a trick...

[1]https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/SB125357990638429655

[Pasorrijer]

Yeah I remember reading that the Ford employees on the US side got the removal time down to 12 minutes a van.

[gumby]

Given the cost of labor it was probably worth doing some design engineering to make the removal as easy as possible

[Hokusai]

> Now looks like they are in trouble for this scheme.

All these cheats will never be accepted for working individuals. Corporations get a different flavor of justice. Even then they push it to the limits and dinner times find a burocrat in the pertinent agency willing to push forward a rightful punishment.

[ethbr0]

SMB and sole proprietorships get away with ridiculous tax things constantly! The only difference is they usually don't try to take it to the Supreme Court when the IRS audits them.