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[ComputerMKII]

you know the roads in your city, and the electric wiring, and the water pipes, and the garbage disposal? where do you think they come from?
edit: Not to mention police forces and firefighters. And hospitals, depending on where you live.

Keeping people dependent on a single provider for goods or services -forcing them not to have a choice- doesn't mean you owe the government (which is sometimes mislabeled as 'society') anything. A slave does not owe his master for being provided with food and housing.

You don't need a government and taxes for roads, electric wiring, water pipes, garbage disposal, police forces, firefighters and hospitals. As long as people will need those and other people have the necessary skills, those goods and services will exist.

 

[Gormless Noodle]

I do vote for more socialist politicians. They don't get elected. And even if they did, chances are they're in the pocket of a corp. Now what?

There is nothing a normal citizen can do to fix this, at least not with voting. And I don't think violence is the answer either.

Sadly, violence is the only solution that's left at this point and the only thing people will ever really listen to.

 

[Keasar]

Yeah, this one, it is a must watch for anyone who believes that it is not a damaging pratice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4o13isDdfY

Damn it, why did Blizzard have to be paired with this..abomination?

 

[CyclopsRock]

Sadly, violence is the only solution that's left at this point and the only thing people will ever really listen to.

Thank God that wise, young Tekkie is here to deliver the truth to us via petrol bombs. It's the only thing we'll listen to, after all!

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Fascinating doc posted earlier.

 

[Atruvius]

Ugh, absolutely disgusting. Fortunately Activision isn't releasing any interesting games so it's easy to avoid giving them any money.

 

[Paches]

Keeping people dependent on a single provider for goods or services -forcing them not to have a choice- doesn't mean you owe the government (which is sometimes mislabeled as 'society') anything. A slave does not owe his master for being provided with food and housing.

You don't need a government and taxes for roads, electric wiring, water pipes, garbage disposal, police forces, firefighters and hospitals. As long as people will need those and other people have the necessary skills, those goods and services will exist.

Sounds like you are for the full privatization of all services?

 

[BLunted]

Tax havens are not illegal, so long as every is properly disclosed.

Nothing to see here.

 

[zashga]

Tax optimisation sounds much more positive than tax evasion.

 

[CyclopsRock]

Tax optimisation sounds much more positive than tax evasion.

That, and it's not the same as tax evasion.

 

[wildfire]

This shit should be illegal.

Well would you like to lobby the states of Delaware and Florida?

Until recently I never knew we were tax shelters for foreign companies and the money we make for the scheme is substantial.

 

[OminoMichelin]

ye i get that
but please define morality for me as well

The republican (which means ''thing of the public'') state is based on the principle that everyone should be able to participate in the public debate some way or another. Thus the state has (not without difficulties) evolved from being a third actor which did very little apart from collecting some taxes and managing a limited amount of armed forces to being something that is supposed to help the general populace rise from their previous condition and become a more active actor in society. If you argue that preventing people from living on the streets, get reduced wages from employers only to work in dangerous living conditions, and saving people from, you know, death, with cheap hospitals is not moral well then I guess we have very different priorities in life.

TLDR version: morality is a relative and very personal term, but if we talk about taxes, and the role of the state in society, it's only moral that the individual contributes to the well being of his fellow citizens.


A necessary disclaimer: I do NOT feel in any way that the state is necessarily efficient at providing those services, but it's still a lot more secure than relying on private to do anything, which is rarely a good idea. Talking to you Comrade Computer: yes, you fucking do.

Well would you like to lobby the states of Delaware and Florida?

Until recently I never knew we were tax shelters for foreign companies and the money we make for the scheme is substantial.

Tbh this is a surprise for me as well.

So you're telling me my taxes are used to buy good and services for the populace? I thought the government just hoarded it all. Thanks for this amazing insight.

Anytime

 

[zychi]

Didn't Valve open an European office in Luxembourg recently? I guess they have to stash those post-Summer sale moneys somewhere...

Yup, and valve being in lux, it initated a fraud alert on my credit card during this summer sale a few days ago

 

[Gormless Noodle]

Thank God that wise, young Tekkie is here to deliver the truth to us via petrol bombs. It's the only thing we'll listen to, after all!

Well, petrol bombs would be a start, sure.

 

[CyclopsRock]

Well, petrol bombs would be a start, sure.

Some would say that's a pretty heavy handed response to reform tax legislation.

 

[Treechopper]

I know that they are considered evil on GAF (and they do have some disgusting tactics) but Activision appears to be the most stable employer from my point of view. You might not get a lot of creative freedom pumping out Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero or COD but at least you know you're not out of a job at any second because of sales. Heck, even Deadpool did decent this past month and that's not even a franchise!

Every company does this. My company has their charter in Delaware, even though they have ZERO business in the state, to get a better tax benefit. It's not illegal, but it is twisting the tax law to your own benefit.

Exactly. As a few others have said, we all hate taxes and businesses are no different. This just feels wrong (should be wrong) because businesses are able to pay a completely different amount percentage wise because of loopholes. This is possible because the laws allow it. Responsibility should be on the lawmakers, not the businesses.

 

[PanicFreak]

it's systemic. if bobby kotick tried to end this practice, he would be voted out by the board in an emergency meeting immediately, and his successor would continue using the loopholes, because it's the smart thing to do. as other people have said, it would take multiple countries working together to remove these loopholes for anything to be happen.

what's truly immoral is the legislators creating these laws in the first place.

They aren't loopholes. They are specifically written into the legislation of the tax codes with important goals in mind. Take Ireland for instance.

They wanted more jobs to come to their country so they wrote legislation that would help companies save money on taxes. So while all of your attention is drawn to the fact that Google has a subsidiary in the Caribbean that earns $10 billion (pulled out of my ass) and only one employee, you are completely ignoring that their Irish subsidiary has thousands of employees.

The system can be gamed in that you have one country that wants to have low unemployment and will use its tax system to promote those goals and another that wants to have a thriving banking industry and will use its tax system to promote those goals. You can connect the two and get extremely beneficial tax treatment.

Every country on Earth uses their tax code to support social goals. Employment is one of those goals. Another example is the beneficial tax treatment of married couples in the United States.

I'll let you in on a secret though. The US Government has a 35 percent tax rate and they know it is too high to be globally competitive. They have specifically written tax law to make it possible for US companies to game the system because they know that the alternative is much worse.

They know that if they lowered the US corporate tax rate people would go ballistic because the corporate tax rate would be much lower than the highest personal income tax rate. Someone on Capitol Hill would lose their job and that's what they fear the most.

 

[PanicFreak]

Keeping people dependent on a single provider for goods or services -forcing them not to have a choice- doesn't mean you owe the government (which is sometimes mislabeled as 'society') anything. A slave does not owe his master for being provided with food and housing.

You don't need a government and taxes for roads, electric wiring, water pipes, garbage disposal, police forces, firefighters and hospitals. As long as people will need those and other people have the necessary skills, those goods and services will exist.

You are forgetting a key concept in economics but one that is not easily modeled. Power.

When you build a sewer system, you will use it to your benefit. End of story.

Human beings are competitive by nature.

 

[Gormless Noodle]

Some would say that's a pretty heavy handed response to reform tax legislation.

And some would say that it's been enough. Though this is just a part of a bigger problem which can't be changed through the current democratic means apparently.

 

[Mlatador]

"Tax optimization" should be considered a crime. I like how those big companies take advantage of the infrastructures of the countries there are based at, but manage to pay almost no tax in return, only because they can hire experts who find them ways of doing so.

The biggest companies, like BMW, Google, Coke, and basically everyone does that... It's beyond desguisting

 

[SneakyStephan]

Evasion, the word you were looking for is evasion , OP.

 

[kswiston]

ye i get that
but please define morality for me as well

I'd say that it's pretty immoral to expect all the benefits of society while actively avoiding the monetary contributions necessary to keep that society's infrastructure strong.

 

[Kiraly]

It sounds like a cool job, it must be thrilling to find all these loopholes and getting a pat on the back from higher ups for saving them millions of dollars.

 

[Zaventem]

I might not be a fan of their games but this is smart.

 

[SporeCrawler]

Vote for socialists then

The current system is what you elected

This argument is flawed. Neither the americans nor the europeans have elected the bermudan lawmakers

 

[PanicFreak]

"Tax optimization" should be considered a crime. I like how those big companies take advantage of the infrastructures of the countries there are based at, but manage to pay almost no tax in return, only because they can hire experts who find them ways of doing so.

The biggest companies, like BMW, Google, Coke, and basically everyone does that... It's beyond desguisting

That's not true. Not even a little bit.

Profits are allocated to every country a business does business in. A company like Google probably performs sales and marketing most European countries but some don't produce the same levels of profit as others.

Generally speaking, the profit margin for "routine" sales and marketing activities is somewhere between 2 to 5 percent of sales. Therefore, if a company is earning a much greater return (say 10 percent) in one country, it is reduced through the movement of money to the IP owner (the Irish company). However, the flip side is true.

If a company is unprofitable (-10 percent return), the IP owner pays the company money to bump them up to a 5 percent return so that they can pay taxes in that country.

It would take 20 seconds to come up with a tax strategy where a very profitable company can allocate profits and losses around the world and end up in a situation where their net tax bill would cause them to get a large refund. Those instances are outlawed. What we have today is a system where you prove that the returns are appropriate in each country based on the functions and risks in each country.

What you end up with is a system where small sales offices will ALWAYS pay taxes in their country of operation and the IP owner (probably a combination of a non-resident Irish, Netherlands, or Singapore company, and the main company) will get refunds when the the company loses money overall but pay taxes when the company is profitable.

You are wrong to say that these companies are using the infrastructure of a company but don't pay taxes. It's the fairest system anyone has yet conceived to manage issues like the taxation of multinational companies.