[asadotzler]

Fair means the same playing field, the same rules, the same consistent outcomes from all the corporations subject to these laws and regulations, and not just one of them who does the right thing. Exercizing loopholes is the opposite of fair. It puts those with the best cheating strategies ahead of those who play by the rules. Because you can catch the ref with his back turned doesn't make you a fair player.

[bobxmax]

What is a loophole? Legally avoiding taxes isn't cheating.

What you're describing is tax fraud, and that's different from corporations using legal strategies to mitigate their tax burdens.

[jodrellblank]

> "What is a loophole?"

"A way of avoiding or escaping a cost or legal burden that would otherwise apply by means of an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law." - The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

What they're describing is corporations using legal strategies to mitigate their tax burdens that you or I cannot do. Lobbying is legal, but you or I cannot lobby to any useful degree. Big-box store companies build their stores to be short-lived buildings, then will only sell them with a contract that says the next occupant cannot be a big-box store, then argue that since value is determined by what someone else will pay and nobody will pay much for the end of life of a short-lived store intended to be a shop but which now cannot be a shop, so their stores are low value and comparable to empty stores, therefore they shouldn't pay much tax on them. "In Wisconsin, new Gov. Tony Evers says his budget proposal will close the dark stores loophole in the state"[1].

> "Legally avoiding taxes isn't cheating."

Try arguing that you would only sell your houses with a stipulation that nobody can live in it, therefore you should pay the same taxes and rates that an empty lot would pay, and see if you still think that "legal is the same as right and fair".

[1] https://slate.com/business/2019/02/dark-store-theory-big-box...

[mupuff1234]

So is using cheat codes in a game also not cheating? It's part of the game after all.

[paulcole]

Yes, that’s correct.

But if I’m playing a multi-player game, there can be rules of that game that ban the use of cheat codes. Breaking those rules would be cheating.

[sneak]

Loopholes are the definition of playing by the rules.

Laws are not enacted in spirit, they are drafted, voted on, and enacted in text. What the law says is what matters, not what people assume it wants to achieve.

To claim that complying with the law exactly as it is written is unfair is, quite frankly, undemocratic and an outright rejection of the rule of law.

[bluefirebrand]

No, criticising the laws for being written in such a way that allow loophole behavior is not undemocratic. In any reasonable democracy you're allowed to criticise laws however much you please

[VoidWhisperer]

Honestly with how it is in America, it feels more akin to slipping the ref a $50 instead of doing it when his back is turned