Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 164 posts

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#141

Post by amygdyl »

dkural wrote: post #86
super-serial wrote: post #79

Bloomberg likes to write about how "tech companies do this" whenever it's something bad. The fact is all companies do this... it's well-known every industry is doing the same. Walmart, Exxon and Pfizer are just a few companies that tax-dodge just as much as Google. It's estimated $700 billion in taxes are dodged so singling out Google's $19 billion seems strange. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/corporate-tax-char…

Yes, but they don't have the "don't be evil" motto, or executives claiming some vague moral superiority to rest of the corporate world in "making the world a better place".

So far I'm alone to have thought contemporaneously this"don't be evil" gimmick was the most insulting piece of platitudinous double speak that the only possible positive spin I could attach was of two naive young boys helpless to direct the intent of their"adult supervision" away from, well you don't build surveillance on this scale and keep the number of people involved small. Silence does not mean not many people involved. Look at Blair slipping ten percent of the population into the country only unearthed by delayed census data. Nobody can do that outside of true authoritarian regimes. But I've been told to forget about trial or bail despite having just told the judge the paperwork claimed was a nullity impossible under any legal theory and therefore I could not have been lawfully arrested...forget bail or trial. Saif the judge. After I pointed out that I was illegally held. I was of course right. Further attempts on my life were desired however. Since 2004 we have been under the emergency powers act suspending legislature and all non executive branches. Two privy council members sit in private to excercise any law as necessary. I caught out one at the through of a massive fraud for which my mother was nearly abused to death to try to shut her up. But if a long story. But war office director for a uncle, ministry of information father well used to censorship the necessary evils not the unnecessary ones... Was the world so completely credulous?

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#142

Post by alphaalpha101 »

charlesdm wrote: post #11
deadmetheny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These loopholes abuse the tax codes of multiple nations. They absolutely are loopholes that ignore the spirit of the law.

Honestly, to me, the law has no spirit. The law having a spirit would mean we have to depend on ethical beliefs, and those can be wildly different for every person and/or company. What seems like an acceptable rate of taxation to pay for person A seems outrageous for B, and both rates would probably seem outrageous anyway to both those people if they have to pay those abroad (e.g. not in the home country of the main…

You are simply wrong. The spirit of the law does exist. It's a concept well established in legal analysis.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#143

Post by monktastic1 »

cryptoz wrote: post #53
monktastic1 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the rational thing to do could be to help out Sure, it's just that some might prefer charities. > The rational move is to fully pay all expected taxes The difficulty is in defining "expected." If the tax authorities give your return the green light, in what sense did they "expect" more? If your definition of expectation isn't about the letter of the law but the spirit, then whose spirit (amongst the many lawyers, a…

The definition of 'expected' comes from the tax code and the government. The article itself states that the governments are expecting more revenue than they are receiving from these companies. Why are they expecting more? Because the companies spend more money finding ways to stash it offshore than the current employees at the government offices can spend to find and estimate the losses that will incur from a company…

> Charities don't build roads or other infrastructure, or test food for safety concerns, or build other large scale useful works that life people out of poverty at scale.

Also, charities don't bomb the living shit out of strangers around the world.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#144

Post by throw2016 »

super-serial wrote: post #79

Bloomberg likes to write about how "tech companies do this" whenever it's something bad. The fact is all companies do this... it's well-known every industry is doing the same. Walmart, Exxon and Pfizer are just a few companies that tax-dodge just as much as Google. It's estimated $700 billion in taxes are dodged so singling out Google's $19 billion seems strange. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/corporate-tax-char…

You are right. These kind of tax loopholes should also be available to individuals. Then when there are no resources for governance and public services the debate can begin in earnest.

But wait, without an operational advanced society companies like Google and others cannot exist. If Google doesn't pay taxes someone else has to.

Loopholes don't just exist, they are created for the express purpose by lobbying, corporate capture and entrenched interests who are are adept at getting their way. Tax consultants like Deloitte and others are often writing the laws and then advising corporates how to work around them. Everyone knows how this works.

Since this kind of evasion does not benefit the average user, american society or anyone apart from Google it follows the only people who will defend them are the Google ecosystem, yet this thread is full of defenders. Why would anyone point to other companies doing the same thing as a defense, surely as average americans this should concern us even more, that it's a trend.

It's this social management by corporate interests that has completely derailed online discussions and makes everything toxic. Think about it, why would anyone come to HN to defend tax evasion by Google and unless readers can push back, self serving vested interests, the immature and trolls will destroy online discussion.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#145

Post by natecavanaugh »

chillacy wrote: post #139
natecavanaugh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel, perhaps wrongly, that this is a non-sequitur. You can't state that morality isn't absolute, but then use an argument to justify why a moral absolute (The Right Thing) defends the proceeding statement. I agree with 1, sometimes agree with 2, but 3 just doesn't follow for me.

Makes sense to me: 1. I stated that morality isn't absolute 2. I provided a contradictory moral framework to the parent poster, leading to a different conclusion The fact that you, me, and the parent poster all disagree about points 1-3 seem to hint that morality isn't absolute, no? (Note I have not outlined my personal beliefs in my post, just posited one possible line of reasoning.)

> The fact that you, me, and the parent poster all disagree about points 1-3 seem to hint that morality isn't absolute, no?

I would clarify that our view of morality is relative, but I think all of us believe in some sort of baseline sense of morality that we feel is wrong (or right) in any context, and for any person.

We may disagree on the details and priority, but I believe most people share a common sense of morality.

And I didn't mean to imply that my comment was a criticism of your personal beliefs, but that the syllogism didn't follow for me. But I do see your point as far as the contrasting of the opening statement and the moral framework don't need to share a logical consistency.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#146

Post by glitcher »

charlesdm wrote: post #136
glitcher wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the law has no spirit. The law having a spirit would mean we have to depend on ethical beliefs The law is also not a set of boolean logic statements. The "spirit" is just a way of acknowledging that language is imprecise at best, and often laws are poorly written to begin with.

So you're saying we should give politicians a pass for making low quality laws but punish (smart) citizens and corporations for finding a way around it?

Not at all. My point is that it is disingenuous to treat laws as if they are mathematical equations.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#147

Post by totalZero »

jstanley wrote: post #125
totalZero wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your thought is incorrect. I mean precisely what I said. There is no moral obligation to pay more than your legally required amount of tax. The presumption would be that no moral obligation exists until one is proven, for precisely the reason you mentioned (it depends on your viewpoint, so we cannot begin with any one set of norms), so if you would kindly propose one, I will disprove it.

Assume the moral obligation lies at exactly the same point as the legal obligation. Now assume the tax law changes. Has your moral obligation changed? Edit: I wasn't saying there's a moral obligation to pay more than the legal obligation. I was saying there's not necessarily a moral obligation to pay even the legal obligation. They're orthogonal issues. You implied that there is a moral obligation to pay at least the…

> Assume the moral obligation lies at exactly the same point as the legal obligation. Now assume the tax law changes. Has your moral obligation changed?

I don't actually believe that this assumption is generally true (nonpayment of taxes can be a form of civil disobedience; Henry David Thoreau did this in opposition to the Mexican-American War), but let's say that we believe in the principle that "any entity has a civic duty to follow the law, and if it is unjust, to protest it and endeavor to change it rather than simply disobeying it." In that case, yes, the moral obligation changes, because it is based on following the law.

> You implied that there is a moral obligation to pay at least the legal minimum, and I'm saying that's not a moral obligation but a legal obligation.

I don't believe I implied that. I just said there's no moral obligation to pay more than the legal minimum. That is true even if there is no moral obligation to pay taxes at all.

> Edit further: imagine living in a regime with 90% income taxes, and which takes that money and uses it to do terrible things. You have a legal obligation to pay those taxes, but I'd argue at least that you don't have a moral obligation to pay, and perhaps that you actually have a moral obligation not to pay. Therefore the legal minimum tax payment is not a moral obligation but a legal obligation.

OK, so even in this situation, there is no moral obligation to pay any more than the minimum legally required tax. I fail to see where we disagree.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#148

Post by ionised »

burke wrote: post #20
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that most of Google's political positions lean liberal, in subsidizing government services by raising taxes. For this same company to be participating in a scheme designed to deprive the government tax revenue, while advocating raising everyone's taxes to pay for things... Suffice to say, this is not a company "doing the right thing", as their code of conduct suggests they should. And bear in mind, this is n…

Corporations literally have a legal obligation to attempt to pay as little tax as is legally possible (really, to maximize shareholder value, which might even mean paying less tax than is legally possible, as long as the expected value of the gambit is positive). The issue is not corporations taking advantage of it, the issue is that we have a system where an actor is obligated to optimize for certain variables withi…

> Corporations literally have a legal obligation to attempt to pay as little tax as is legally possible

They literally do not.

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#149

Post by crb002 »

In Iowa, the City of Waukee was bribed $100m by Apple to abate $170m in property taxes. Think about that. You pay a $1000 bribe to the city and they nerf $1700 of your property tax; screwing the local school district/county/state.

Massive brazen tax fraud.

Apple even bragged about the $100m bribe in their press release calling it an "endowment fund".

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/08/apples-next-us-data-c...

Re: Google used a tax loophole to shelter $19.2B

#150

Post by mywittyname »

ucaetano wrote: post #73
titzer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't indict corporations for following the tax code, change the laws. Sure, don't indict them, just please, please recognize them for exactly what they are: soulless, inhuman, profit maximizers that will take every inch afforded to them by the law (and sometimes more). You gotta watch them like a hawk and don't believe their statements to the press.

"please recognize them for exactly what they are: soulless, inhuman, profit maximizers that will take every inch afforded to them by the law" Let me know when you invest your savings in a company that returns lower profits because they refuse to pay lower taxes, even if they legally could. And let me know when you find a tax deduction that could save you money, but you decide to not take the deduction and pay more ta…

That didn't sound like a criticism, but a statement of the obvious: corporations are legally obligated to do anything they legally can to generate more money.

My takeaway from that comment was, to expect that behavior and ensure legislators write and enact laws that establish effective corporate governance.

Post reply on HN