[pvnick]

If my accountant paid a penny more taxes than I owed I would fire them. That politicians are attacking successful companies for trying to pay as little in taxes as possible is offensive and embarrassing. If you're unhappy with the law then change it. Otherwise shut the hell up and stop wasting the tax money you're complaining about.

[skore]

Now now, be fair. There IS a difference between "paying only the taxes that I am required to pay" and setting up a Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.

One is investing resources to minimize failure ("I want to make sure we don't pay more than we need to pay"), which I completely agree with - if your accountant fails to do that, it's not a good accountant. But the other is a proactive investment of even more money to pay even less taxes ("I want to pay even less than what would be normal by the intent of the tax law").

[AnthonyMouse]

I'm not sure what line you're attempting to draw. An accountant's job isn't just to make sure you file the right paperwork, it's to identify courses of action that could have a significant effect on the bottom line. You seem to be suggesting that a business would be doing something unreasonable by moving any of its operations into a jurisdiction with lower taxes, since that would be making an investment in order to pay less taxes.

[skore]

> You seem to be suggesting that a business would be doing something unreasonable by moving any of its operations into a jurisdiction with lower taxes [...]

Moving to or setting up a subsidiary in a different jurisdiction: Completely fine.

Doing the same thing for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes: Not fine.

I really don't get what's so hard to understand about that. How many employees do Google or Apple have in Ireland, the Cayman Islands or the Netherlands? And how many in the US? Quite simple, I think.

[AnthonyMouse]

>Moving to or setting up a subsidiary in a different jurisdiction: Completely fine.

>Doing the same thing for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes: Not fine.

And how exactly do you propose to distinguish the two?

"Number of employees" is a completely worthless metric. Apple (and/or Foxconn) employs many times more employees in China than in the U.S., does that mean they should be reporting most of their profits in China?

[skore]

I'm pretty sure that Foxconn and Apple are separate corporations, so I have no idea what you're getting at.

Apple has 73k employees, 50k of which are in the US. Pretty sure most of them have benefited from US society (education, roads, police stations etc.) or benefit from it now that they have moved to the US.

[AnthonyMouse]

>I'm pretty sure that Foxconn and Apple are separate corporations, so I have no idea what you're getting at.

Apple US is a separate corporation from Apple China too, that's how all of this works. Apple Ireland ends up with all the profits and is a distinct corporate entity from Apple US.

You keep talking about use of government services or where employees are. Those things are not corporate profit. If you want to tax companies that employ your workforce then you can tax payroll. If you want to tax companies that use local government services then you can tax commercial real estate. What you can't do is try to tax corporate profit at one of the highest nominal rates in the world and then be surprised when international corporations arrange to stop reporting any profits within your jurisdiction. Profit is a highly mobile asset. It's like trying to levy a local property tax on gold bullion -- the people who own large amounts of bullion are just going to move it out of your tax jurisdiction. If you then say "but they still live here and use government services" they're just going to shrug and look at you like you're a crazy person for expecting anything different to have happened, because you're trying to tax the wrong thing.

[pvnick]

You're overcomplicating the issue. It's not the accountant's job to make up for lazy lawmaking. It's the lawmakers. Go bug the lawmakers, not the people trying to make money within the law.

Would you seriously have done differently in Google's shoes if it meant the difference between millions of dollars? Billions of dollars? Your answer to that question is probably why you're not making those kinds of decisions.

[pvnick]

"My good friend and CFO, Larry, why didn't you set up that offshore account that would legally save us millions of dollars in taxes per quarter like we talked about? That way we could hire more workers so they could feed their families and receive adequate health coverage."

"Oh that wouldn't be fair to the people that couldn't do that."

"You're fired."

[skore]

Alright, you really are just trolling, got it.

So unless you are setting up multiple subsidiaries in tax havens and funnel the money around in a way that lets you narrowly avoid the laws that otherwise quite clearly determine what your fair share to society is, there is no way to have a proper business and in the end, the children get hurt and poor little Rebecca can't afford to pay for lunch at school and everybody points fingers at her. Boo, boo, haa, haa, money, money. Understood.

This kind of strawman argument really used to make me sick, but these days, I'm mostly bummed out about how I've become so used to seeing it.

[pvnick]

Here's my logic:

1. Your "fair share to society" is determined by the law.

2. These companies are following the law to the "t"

3. If you don't like it then change the law.

It's that simple. Case closed.

[skore]

No, the "fair share to society" is determined by the prevailing morals of society. You can make laws all day, if society doesn't agree with them, you run into problems (ask some leaders in the middle east).

Imagine a town at a lake. There is a law that all citizens can only take so much water out of the lake. Now there is a guy taking a lot of water out of the lake - to the point where he steps over the law. But wait! He is actually registered as the citizen of a different town! Phew. Law abiding citizen after all.

What happens is that some corporations extract more value from society than is healthy for that society. That they have so much money that they can bend the tax code to their will without breaking it is completely besides the point. The result is the same: They have a net negative effect on society. That's not fair.

The lake of the town is being sucked dry. Just look at how much money those Double Irish corporations have in their accounts while a lot of of countries struggle to pay their public employees and have to make drastic cuts that directly affect pretty much only the middle and lower classes. That's not fair at all.

Well, at least they can keep buying those iPads on credit that will ruin the rest of their lives.

[summerdown2]

I have come across this attitude a lot recently, particularly amongst Americans of the libertarian persuasion ... the belief that the world must fit into one of, usually two, boxes and the only choice you're allowed is which box it is. (sorry in that it's not my intention to typecast you = I've just noticed a correlation which may or may not fit your particular case).

Anyway, I don't believe it's a binary choice at all (change the tax code or shut up). I think the situation allows much more variation.

People, including politicians have the right to discuss things publicly in a democracy.

Making public statements and using their pulpit is a valid tactic politicians can use. Likewise, the press and private citizens. Google may not like it, but public debate and sometimes condemnation is a valid feature of all open societies. It may also be a necessary prior step to actually changing the law.