381–390 of 817 posts
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You are welcome to give up your American citizenship if that income tax becomes too burdensome for you.
Only if you have another citizenship to turn to. Being stateless isn't an option.
That is unless you're a rich company - then you can create shell entities with effectively no domicile that earn income, but aren't taxed in any country.
Corporations are people, my friend. People with extraordinary abilities.
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The fix can certainly involve appealing to morals and human responsibility. A company is, after all, just a group of people. This should be a very strong tactic considering how liberal Silicon Valley is. The major players preach constantly about progressive ideals, yet fail to do more than the minimum when push comes to shove. My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax re…
It would be illegal and unethical for Apple to pay more taxes than it owes. That money doesn’t belong to Tim Cook, but to Apple shareholders.
The least they could do is report these tax loopholes: post them publicly to make it easier for the government to close them. Instead, they are kept a secret. Why do you think that is?
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They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?
Furthermore, the nature of competition means "moral" companies, moral defined loosely here as those who pay more taxes than legally required, are at a disadvantage to "immoral" companies who pay the legal minimum. It's a prisoner's dilemma for executives that really do want to do right by their communities. The solution is to fix the tax code problem. If the moral "rules" don't apply to _everyone_ then they are worth…
What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can't evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate. But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies/holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate. So, what? The tax rate of a country is now "artificial", because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because th…
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> Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale? Legislation doesn't do anything if actors don't see a moral responsibility to abide by it. Case in point: There are laws against murder but murder still happens. Does that mean we need better laws in regards to murder? Imho it rather means that some parts of society still have…
That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. One that's probably more relatable is itemized deductions for US taxpayers. I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. Do people take advantage of that and deduct the costs for ridiculous mansions? Sure. Shaming them for it is silly. If that exemption isn't fair, then put a ca…
The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't always the only solution. And with something as abstract as "taxation" I think it's usually a rather bad approach because new regulations will only result in new loopholes being created, it's an endless cat&mouse game wasting a lot of resources for everybody involved.
That's why I mentioned that "moral debt". Across the whole world there exists lots of behavior that's technically not "illegal", but still frowned upon by large parts of societies, tax evasion rates among them.
Imho if you want people to follow the "rules of society", and not use every chance they get to circumvent financial legislation (which is what a lot of tax evasion effectively boils down to), then you first need to convince them that paying taxes isn't just a burden to them but also of use to them.
> I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax.
If that's an easy and obvious process, open and evident to everybody who'd it be relevant to, then that's a-okay. Sadly that often ain't the case which is in large parts the result of the above-mentioned cat&mouse game.
I realize that my whole point might come across naive in a kinda "if people were just good we wouldn't need laws" way, but that's not at all my intention. I just think there's a real cultural rift here in terms of how seriously some people take their responsibilities towards the society they are living in, historically that's never been something you could fix through "legislation".
What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can't evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate. But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies/holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate. So, what? The tax rate of a country is now "artificial", because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because th…
What taxes does Apple, an American company, owe Germany? Are you paying taxes half way across the world from your place of business?
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This. I run a small company as well, and taxes are a damn maze. I just checked the tax authorities website in this country, and there are no less than 121 different tax-exempt health activities – things my company can pay for me, without having to also pay taxes. For most other things, there's sales tax (possibly other kinds of tax too, but let's limit it ourselves for brevity) that comes in at no less than three dif…
Governments have no interest in fixing it. Usually law makers and legislators benefits from those loopholes, directly (with their own money) or indirectly (with campain supporters). Not only in corrupt contries but also in well stablished democracies. Those loopholes are used even by people who claims doing a lot of charity, as Paradise paper is showing. I'm very pessimist about this going away anytime soon.
Which is exactly why I think the tax office should provide a free service to anyone looking to optimize their tax footprint. If it's legal, why not?
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This is the key point that is so often missed. Getting angry at Apple et al for following their incentives rationally is silly. I'd love to see journalists doing a better job of explaining the failures of the tax system rather than peddling pointless outrage, but I suppose that they too are following their incentives rationally; outrage gets more clicks.
It's not silly. It's the first step in a long chain of events that hopefully will end up with a better tax code. Giving companies that do this bad PR incentivizes companies towards reporting loopholes instead of exploiting them. Journalists already do try and explain the failures of the tax system. For example, check out this graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl... The tax code is com…
What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can't evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate. But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies/holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate. So, what? The tax rate of a country is now "artificial", because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because th…
These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.
Admitting thus that at least some of the people and companies that hide their money in tax havens made their money in a legitimite way (we’ll get into this later), don’t you think they are entitled to try to save as much of it as they can? The author of the piece makes reference to the mostly public educational system which implies Apple has some social reaponsibility to give back to it’s country. How about the high salaries that Apple pays to its engineers? Isn’t this enough to show that they value craftmanship?