Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.
Sure, but not paying any taxes isn't obviously a horrible thing.
The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes (probably because they had a loss). The logic behind this is that because amazon provides jobs, the government doesn't want the company firing people and/or not hiring people because of an unrelated occurrence.
If you want what amazon is doing to be horrible you have to show that what they're doing is actually horrible.
Perhaps talk about how they're making use of the resources of the united states while not paying back for the maintenance of those resources. Like, delivery trucks damage roads and without delivery trucks amazon can't exist, and therefore they are externalizing their costs to the tax payer by not paying taxes.
Additionally, you'll need to explain why the jobs argument is not sufficient to excuse their lack of taxes.
And you might also need to talk about how amazon R&D also isn't a good excuse. For example, if amazon perfects drone delivery of goods then they won't damage the goods. So we should let amazon not pay taxes so that they can perfect drone delivery because it will be a good to the entire nation. You need an argument for why this sort of idea is wrong.
> The government says, through its tax laws, that it wants amazon to not pay taxes
This kind of statement that assumes big companies passively take their tax bill from the government is either exceptionally naïve or wilfully disingenuous. We're talking about a company whose executives sat down with representatives the Luxembourg government to negotiate a special sweetheart deal (subsequently ruled to be unlawful state aid) and then moved its European HQ to Luxembourg
So what are you suggesting; Amazon should voluntarily send a bonus check to the fed? That's just ridiculous. I'm also not convinced that following the current tax law is "something horrible".
What's most troubling is that these are the same companies who say things like "We need more educated workers" as if tax dollars don't help to do that. They also use it was a rationalization / justification for paying less and less taxes (i.e., "We're not getting any benefit from what we're already playing.) To the bottom we go...
Why not both? If I move to a country that legally allows me to do something horrible, people will rightfully call me a bad person regardless of the legality of the action.