The idea that corporations can avoid paying taxes anywhere and this is just "good accounting" is stupid on the face of it, regardless of the terminology used.
The idea that governments can write arbitrarily complicated regulations and this is just "good government" or "moral duty to pay and pay" is stupid on the face of it, regardless of the terminology used.
The so-called loopholes were put there for a reason to benefit someone. If another corporation comes along to take advantage of them in a different way, well, that's just how laws work. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
"He" is not a for-profit corporation, but a human person. Corporations aren't people no matter how much dollars go into PR efforts to tell people otherwise. As such, them not paying their part to the society is damaging no matter how many personal appeals you do.
Please stop humanizing corporations to make them get away with not paying their part.
It seems like the point is that we’d be naive to expect a corporation, presumably governed by rational actors working to maximize profits, to pay more taxes than the minimum.
Regular citizens do not have the opportunity to successfully lobby for tax avoidance loopholes to be created and maintained for their benefit, so responding to a point about unequal advantages to corporations with a comment about rational accounting is unhelpful.
Is your position that corporations don't have an unjust advantage, or that the unjust advantage is okay and people shouldn't complain about it?
Neither -- I'm not comparing citizens and corporations. I'm simply saying that it's naive to expect a company to voluntarily pay more taxes than is required. They will not pay more taxes than required until the laws are changed.
Notice that I haven't made a claim that corporations should be treated as individuals, or that corporations do or don't have an unjust advantage, or that having an unjust advantage is okay.
I'm not humanising corporations, I hate it when they make matey communications and kick myself if I catch myself referring to a (singular) company as 'they'.
But the terms avoidance and evasion are the same for corporate taxation as they are for personal tax. The desire to not pay more than necessary is also the same, and that seems entirely rational.
If you want a company to pay more tax (and it's not presently breaking laws - not evading tax) then you should want legislation to change. 'Company X should donate to the my country's treasury' (pay more tax than it needs to, not avoid it) is not a compelling argument for my (fictional) company any more than it is for my personal liability.
There is a pretty clear difference, to me, between saying "this practice is obviously wrong, but technically legal--and we should work to change that," and lauding the company's actions as "good accounting," scolding people for confusing the act of successfully evading paying taxes with "tax evasion" as though this particular bit of legal jargon were shedding light on anything for non-accountants, and carrying water for companies that are not mere passive actors who benefit from a bizarre tax code with inexplicable but convenient loopholes, but rather actively lobby for tax laws to be changed to benefit them (something I, as an individual without billions of dollars to my name, could not effectively do even if I wanted to).
I don't think there's much that's 'obviously' right or wrong in economic policies or tax law, and certainly companies that would fare worse under your proposed changes are the wrong target for urges of change.
Or any legislation really, that's the point of case law, a particular circumstance wasn't anticipated, so there's some interpretation and umming and ahing, and thenceforth that example's able to be used to steer the next.
Online service companies (for example) operating over multiple physical territories, not really 'in' any more than the other, weren't anticipated, the broad strokes of the way they're taxed predates them. It makes sense to advocate for some fundamental change that reimagines how to effectively tax them (I wouldn't call it 'obviously' necessary, but it's a sensible argument worthy of debate) - but it's a waste of breath to expect such companies to volunteer extra tax not required of them.
The fact that for you "should online companies pay taxes?" is a subject worthy of debate indicates such a vast gulf between our positions that there's really nothing to discuss, I think. Certainly the idea that Google is not "in" any particular country seems pretty strange to me, but if that is indeed your position then clearly it should pay tax in all of those countries, not none.
Not 'should they pay taxes' (of course, those which are owed, not doing so is evasion and illegal) but 'how should they be taxed'.
Tax laws apply to them, but pretty much (IANA tax professional btw) aren't setup for online companies and haven't changed (in rough form) since they existed.
Profit based taxation doesn't work if you can just continually reinvest revenue and not declare a profit. (Not unique to online cos of course, but perhaps more prevalent? Maybe more linked to high R&D cos in general.)
Defining where a sale was conducted is messy if your headquarters, accounting dept., tech dept., servers, TLD, customer, self-identity, ... can all be in different jurisdictions.
Etc. ad nauseam. That's what's up for debate.
I think we'd be happy with the same outcome, I just don't think it's worth appealing to companies to ignore the bottom line and pay tax to a level that's higher than required (and so not defined) but that 'we' (you'll never please everyone, so pluck a number out of the air) will be happy with.
Isn't the stupid thing that the tax system is set up such that these things are possible(to pay less tax than you 'should')? As David Mitchell says[0], making how much tax you pay a sliding scale based on your morality or ethics(while still remaining on the right side of the law) is just a tax on morality and ethics - the people with the least of those things will end up richer than the people with more of it, which is 'fucking bonkers'
I got into a big argument over a Monopoly game once - three of us were playing, Player 1 was in the clear lead, I was in second place but at a large disadvantage, and Player 3 had the least assets but was not having fun and wanted to leave the game. The rules of monopoly say that a player quitting gets all their properties sent to the bank, which then auctions them off. If that happened, Player 1 would have easily beat me in a heads up manner. So I convinced Player 3 to not quit just yet, and to sell me all of his properties for $1. Player 1 was furious, saying it was against the rules, but there is no rule against selling your properties for next to nothing and then quitting immediately. Was I in the wrong for convincing Player 3 to sell me his properties before quitting?
FWIW, that's not against the rules, you can have custom 'contracts' like that; iirc it's even so allowed that there's a stipulation for when it may happen (the beginning of the instigator's turn, I think) in the rules.
I think (I think) the answer is that it's not really about morality or ethics, but about finding an equilibrium between desired taxation and profit optimisation. The latter finds ways to reduce tax burden, and if that results in an unacceptably low burden the former (should) responds with rule changes.
But that points to it being more political than ethical, that's perhaps quite a free-market capitalist take on it.
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