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by diggan 588 days ago
> Literally every single company that can afford to setup these tax transfer schemes, are actively evading taxes.

Yeah, but I think that's different than what happened in this case with Netflix. Declaring earnings from one country in another country is not just "tax optimizations" but straight up illegal. It's not using/abusing legal loopholes like most larger companies do, but going against the law.
1 comments
yunohn 588 days ago
Honestly, I’m not sure. I find the premise of such tax laws to be illogical at a basic level. There are apparently always multiple ways to create legal loopholes.

If we consider the Irish sandwich mechanism that was recently “stopped”, somehow that hasn’t materially affected any of the innumerable companies that were using it. As we saw in the Apple vs EU case, most practices might’ve never been actually legal either.

So my personal opinion is that (almost) all tax “optimization” is at the minimum immoral, but most likely illegal too.

Edit: This reminds me of the idea of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Your personal optimization is not what I’m talking about - corporations have legal teams the size of SMBs lobbying/creating/looking for secret loopholes, and people are talking about public self service methods.

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sokoloff 588 days ago
I'm sorry for my immoral behavior of generally holding investments for more than a year, contributing to my 401(k) and HSA accounts, buying an EV, and installing energy efficiency upgrades in my house, all of which are driven by tax optimization (at least in part).
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marcinzm 588 days ago
If a government says do X and I will cut your takes by Y then is doing X immoral?
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DrillShopper 588 days ago
It depends on what X is.

If X is "install solar panels" or "provide affordable housing" or "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" then X is very likely moral.

If X is "lie to us about where your revenue came from" then X is very much immoral.

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przemub 588 days ago
@bryanrasmussen I wouldn't put it past the Irish one!
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bryanrasmussen 588 days ago
no government says "lie to us about where your revenue came from and we will cut your taxes"
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yunohn 588 days ago
If a government “says”? These large companies actively campaign, draft, and lobby for the legal frameworks and loopholes that they exploit. The government and the companies are the same and are fighting for the same pot of tax money.
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