271–280 of 555 posts
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I personally can't stand this sort of thing because it conflates something personal/intimate with a press release, and that's just kinda gross to me.
You're saying that her daughter won't get the warm fuzzies in 20 years time over a PR release veiled as a "future note to our daughter"? Me neither.
> We will give 99% of our Facebook shares -- currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others. Ninety. Nine. Percent.
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What about the concrete initiative of just paying taxes in each countries where the real business is done?
If Facebook were to pay taxes "where the real business is done" (assuming there is a legal way to avoid doing so), it would probably be considered gross negligence. I imagine the same is true of any multinational. Besides, Facebook can put that money to much better use than government. All the lowly users of Facebook on the other hand do not know how to best spend their money and had better hand it over. Zuck says so…
The point is that if facebook were to stop its tax evasion business, it would probably not be profitable.
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Man evades taxes, scams his coworkers, conceals a press release as "letter to daughter" and is greeted with "He just wants to do good".
>Man evades taxes He or Facebook as a company? >scams his coworkers Citation or clarification much appreciated :)
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While Facebook is not doing everything it can to evade taxation in many countries, right? And let them choose what to do with the money. Why isn't Zuckerberg pledging to drive his company as a good citizen?
I would call that tax avoidance, not evasion, but no matter. Judge Learned Hand (a real person's name) wrote, "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes." I agree wholeheartedly. I imagine that were I in their shoes, I'd be fairly confident that I cou…
I think that is beside the point. These companies are violating the spirit of law, not the letter of the law, when they avoid taxes. Take for example, the recent Pfizer/Allergen merger which happened merely for tax-avoidance reasons. It's legal, but it's totally uncalled for and it's clear to see why: a lot of what Pfizer stands on is from NIH-funded research, it's from us the tax-payers. Pfizer should have played fair by paying back, so NIH can fund even more studies, so that more people are employed, so that academia has more breathing room, etc.
Something's always bugged me about relying on philanthropy as a source of funding the public good, as opposed to the public funding the public good through taxation and the democratic process: In the former case, the public doesn't really have much of a say about where the help goes. We must rely on the judgment (and personal values) of a few rich people and hope they pick charities that maximize the benefit. Would t…
I have more faith in the judgement of the system that elects billionaires than the system that elects our government. Billionaires will spend their money in more efficient and productive ways than our government spends tax dollars. You may disagree with a rich individual's vision of the future, but he will be vastly more likely to effect his vision than our elected officials.
Yes you can, Mark: Stop requiring people to use real names. And stop caving in requests from authoritarian governments that want to do their dirty work for them.
I feel only on HN and Reddit can people find reason to criticize a guy who is giving away billions of dollars for humanity. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
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I would call that tax avoidance, not evasion, but no matter. Judge Learned Hand (a real person's name) wrote, "Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes." I agree wholeheartedly. I imagine that were I in their shoes, I'd be fairly confident that I cou…
> I imagine that were I in their shoes, I'd be fairly confident that I could do more good for the world by private philanthropy, directed to causes that I felt compelling, than by fueling general government spending/avarice around the world. I think that is beside the point. These companies are violating the spirit of law, not the letter of the law, when they avoid taxes. Take for example, the recent Pfizer/Allergen…
The Internal Revenue Service (of the US) writes:
Avoidance of taxes is not a criminal offense. Any attempt to reduce, avoid, minimize, or alleviate taxes by legitimate means is permissible. The distinction between evasion and avoidance is fine yet definite. One who avoids tax does not conceal or misrepresent. He shapes events to reduce or eliminate tax liability and upon the happening of the events, makes a complete disclosure. Evasion, on the other hand, involves deceit, subterfuge, camouflage, concealment, some attempt to color or obscure events, or making things seem other than what they are.
Did this Dutch company purchase product/services from this Irish company?
Did these two companies merge and the surviving company was the non-US company?
Did this executive receive stock options on such-and-such date?
Those are all relatively easy questions of fact.
Should the surviving entity of the merger have been the US company? (According to whom? Or on what basis? To what end? Which benefits the investors the most? What did the shareholders vote to do with their company? Why should someone else judge that what they did was "legal but improper"?)
The real issue is simply that the US is relatively uncompetitive as a corporate domicile (on a rates and particularly on a "worldwide income basis") Attempts to patch the system without addressing this root issue are unlikely to succeed in a clean and sustainable fashion, IMO.
Okay, maybe it's just me, but after reading the introduction and getting through the list of extremely difficult "Can we..." challenges followed by the "We must..." directives, the first quote that popped into my head was a variation of “a poor man is crazy, but a rich man is just ‘eccentric.’” I get the desire to solve the world's ills, of society's shortcomings, of essentially fixing the thousands of years of evolu…
Man tries to help the world with his money and he's greeted with criticism.
Why the Rich Give to Charity[1]
Some give out of vanity. Some out of guilt. Some for the tax breaks. Some give out of conviction that their success in business makes them equally expert in solving the world’s problems. Yet perhaps the most powerful and common reason why the rich give is the idea most commonly referred to as “legacy.”
would you rather be remembered as that guy who build the biggest and meanest personal data collection machine, tracking people, extending global surveillance, pushing to destroy the foundation of the internet and made a fortune out of it (and a little stock trickery), or as the guy who gave most of his billions of money to charity ?
[1]:http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/03/08/why-the-rich-give-to-...