Amusing. I've gone through the thread, and the supposed triumphs of your arguments don't exist. We'll start with the "ethics" first.
Sorry but the world isn't so clearly black and white. There are very intricate complexities within it, and your attempts to simplify everything reeks.
You're asserting a positive statement (that engaging in tax avoidance strategies is "unethical"). The onus is
entirely on you to support this claim. Towards such, you must put forth some sort of ethical framework for judging the action in question.
Let us simplify: action X is to beyond what is legally obligated under current tax law. Action Y is to pay one's legal obligations (i.e., what Apple has done).
Asserting that there is an ethical difference between the two implicitly requires an ability to judge such a difference. To date, no one in this thread has been willing (or, rather, able) to provide the weighing mechanism by which this judgment might be rendered. Simply asserting "facts" do not rise to the level of such a mechanism even if I were to grant, for the sake of debate, the idea that your assertions are for each entirely accurate.
This has nothing to do with "shades of grey." On the contrary, such complexities arise in the application of an ethical framework in certain scenarios -- but I'm asking simply for a framework in general. Even if your assertion about complexities is accepted, that doesn't absolve you of your burden while asserting a positive statement.
When asserting the ethicality of an action, you get the exciting job of showing how that action differs from others you judge to be ethical. That means a brightline, a lovely little weighing mechanism, and justifications for each.
In the absence of such, you can't argue an action to be unethical. At best, you get to assert that you don't like it. At least there you don't have to worry about any annoying little things like justifications.
But let's go beyond that. Proof has been put forward regarding the acceptability, and indeed necessity, of tax deductions at both the individual and corporate levels. In the face of which, you simply cry out that they don't matter. They're different. Naturally; nothing like being able to assert that anything that doesn't fit your positon... doesn't matter. It's intellectually dishonest, but who cares?
No they don't as was again argued at great length. Way to ignore it all though, as if somehow your views are so superior.
Your position is, at best, a matter of degree: they're "unethical" because they pursue tax avoidance strategies further than you might. OK. You still need support a means of weighing such a judgment. For instance, how much of an effort is too much? Hell, let's settle for the means by which you're judging "degree" of difference.
No luck?
Perhaps but we are commenting on the appropriateness of those judgments. Decisions have been, and will be in the future, overturned you know.
And here you betray yourself. Decisions are overturned, but what you're referring to won't be. There's no constitutional basis for asserting the illegitimacy of tax deductions. Congress passes tax legislation, and as part of that legislation, includes deductions and other elements that affect tax policy. This stuff is pretty simple.
When we look at decisions like
Plessy v. Ferguson and others where decisions were overturned in addition to being able to be called unethical (etc.), when judging the ethicality of such decisions, there is always an ethical framework at play. A means of judging that ethicality. That's then translated into legal arguments later.
Again, no ethical framework or means of judging ethicality has been provided. You say you don't like X, and you give reasons ABC why you don't. Fine. You've just supported why you don't like it. But that's irrelevant.
Again plenty of instances to the contrary were provided. What you are demonstrating time and again in your replies is negligence.
Out of curiosity, do you understand the meaning of the term negligence? There's a significant difference between negligence (or laziness, which I think would fit what you meant a bit better) and a reasoned, informed opinion that differs from your own. But hey? Who cares about nuances like that.
This comments goes a long way in demonstrating just how naive your understanding of the law is. Sadly for you, deontology often plays a significant role within our legal system. Attempts to collude and conspire, attempts to intentionally harm others, even if unsuccessful and of no material consequence whatsoever, are still legally reprimandable.
Do you have any clue what deontological ethics actually are? Here's a hint: they're often called duty ethics, and are a normative position that weigh actions on the basis of adherence to rules (at a basic level). Tax avoidance meets its ethical obligations under a deontological framework because such strategies are both enabled and codified under our legal code.
As for the other points in this paragraph, congratulations on thumbing open a copy of Black's Law. But there's no unifying principle behind the terms you've tossed out.
IF you were talking about the furtherance of a crime, and IF the elements you're referring to had a basis in law in relation to that crime, you could throw out those terms--provided you could support their use.
But we're not talking about any of that. In their absence, we're talking about a bunch of terms you've found interesting and have tossed them into a sentence. The only problem here is that a collection of big words isn't a logical, let alone coherent, argument.
As for collusion in particular, it's a perfect example of how you don't know what you're talking about. The term, in either the legal or economic sense, refers to a series of actions meant to limit competition. Even if we accept your premise that legal tax avoidance is unethical, that's not collusive behavior. Try again?
And I ask again: where is the explicit connection between legal tax avoidance and "harm" unto others? The point relies on an implicit idea that Apple hasn't paid enough taxes. But the same implicit argument justifies criticizing a company because they didn't take action to increase their profits because such an increase leads to a direct increase in taxes paid. In short, evil Apple for not making *more* money. Sounds a little nuts? Thank you, that's my point: there's no basis for criticizing a company for not paying *enough* taxes so long as the taxes paid meet their legal obligations. You certainly can't pin the failures of governance on any individuals who meet their legal obligations. Especially considering that corporate tax revenue makes up less than 10% of federal revenues.
In short, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Another sad instance that has been refuted on multiple occasions.
No they haven't. They're well-based in clear economic evidence. Analysis of corporate tax incidence is incredibly complex, but most debate on the matter is a question of degree. By and large, there's almost no evidence to suggest that corporate taxes fall entirely on capital (and, consequently, capital owners which would amusingly enough also include most major mutual funds, retirement accounts, labor pension funds, and more). Some of the analyses linked to in this thread only further prove my point if people could read beyond their abstracts (hell, let alone understand the abstracts).
Incidence analysis has one underlying fact that is beyond dispute across the entirety of the economics profession: people pay all taxes. The question is then a matter of determine where that burden lies (though it is an immensely difficult one for corporate taxes in particular).
I'd strongly suggest starting with a few straight forward analyses to look into this subject, particularly as related to labor:
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4363
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/18067
http://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/RegionalRWP/RRWP07-01.pdf
http://ideas.repec.org/p/btx/wpaper/0707.html
http://www.kotlikoff.net/sites/defa... noncorporate goods are close substitutes.pdf
And an interesting read on whether action should be taken on overseas activity:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1365907
But this is getting away from the original point: even if I were entirely wrong (and I'm not), it still has no bearing on whether legal tax avoidance strategies are, in fact, either ethical or unethical. That's still something you haven't even been able to put forward any sort of ethical framework for making that determination, let alone actually making it.
In short, try again. This time, with real arguments instead of snide remarks. They don't actually get you very far, and they don't actually equal valid arguments.
P.S. - Not to sound snide myself (well, not too much anyhow
), but you might want to read up on a lovely little thing called cognitive dissonance.
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This is a good point, and it is regrettable that the NYT apparently made such a huge mistake. Being that as it may, there is still an issue revolving around the appropriateness of loopholes. But I grant you the discussion would never have gotten this far had the NYT times not been as irresponsible as they apparently are. Thanks for your input.
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No I'm not saying that at all. Don't try and twist meanings to weave up another strawman. Here is another example if you think it'll help you understand more easily. Speeding is prohibited. One offense, no big deal. You pay your ticket. Two tickets? No big deal, you pay another ticket. 3, 4, 5? Now you are getting in danger zone. Your points are about to expire and you are going to lose your license because we think repeat offense are more reprehensible than single occurrences. Each instance of speeding is bad, but the accumulation of multiple offenses is even worse. There are degrees of ethical, and degrees of unethical behavior. I'm sorry you can't concede that.
You haven't proven that legal tax avoidance correlates with the example provided in the form of speeding. You haven't proven that legal tax avoidance is, indeed, an offense at all. Hell, you haven't even provided a basic framework for approaching the question.
If we're sticking with absurdly childish metaphors, then imagine this: you have a stretch of road where it's legal to drive 70 miles per hour under statutory law. You don't like that, and take offense when someone actually does drive 70 miles per hour on this stretch of road. Or, perhaps as a tangential observation, you have a car that can't reach 70 miles per hour.
In either case, you've provided no basis for asserting that the action of driving 70 miles an hour is, in itself, unethical.
So good job on your metaphor. It only further proves the fundamental problems with your position.
