Why not both? Dissatisfaction drives change. Yes, companies are expected to take advantage of legal means of increasing value, but there is a spectrum of behavior between "shrewd" and "immoral" that still falls entirely within "legal", and the individual human beings in the affected society reasonably have opinions about where the line is. When the numbers are too disgusting, it's OK for people to express dissatisfaction with both lawmakers and the company in question, market forces be damned.
And let's not forget that the companies frequently play an outsize role in influencing the written laws. The line between "playing the game" and "cheating" is very fuzzy in real world systems.
It's hard to be mad at someone once you realize you'd do the same thing if you were in their shoes.
Loopholes like this should be illegal, but their existence ~obligates executives to take advantage of them (fiduciary duty). You'd just be bad at business if you didn't.
As someone who wants to be good at business, I can't get mad at the players here – just the game.
Then reflect that in the law! Don’t setup a bunch of loopholes and then get mad when corporate tax accountants find them and use them.
In the business world there are mountains and mountains of tax incentives for employing this type of person, that type of person, building here, building there, etc. What you see in front of you is what the law is encouraging and asking companies to ignore “obviously wrong” tax setups is naive.
The line is super blurry, all the way down to a 1 person business expensing anything and everything “related” to their business.
Becoming a CEO does not magically make your responsibility to society disappear. Shareholders are an additional thing you need to worry about, not the only thing.
I'll put it a different way. Most people don't see issues with that, they see issues with shit legislation. You want an effective method? Provide a negative incentive to correct that. Its far more effective to do that.
Talking about how we should get them to change their morality may give us the feel goods, but that's about all it'll do.
But why would you want the law to change if you don't have a problem with what they're doing? Honestly I don't think you're right about what "most people" think. I can't remember ever seeing a protest about the tax code, but there was a global social movement about vilifying immoral corporations.
And frankly I think it's more effective. If you try to argue about tax policy, it's easy for a well-educated opponent to kind of dazzle you with cherry-picked stats and economic models and say "well actually this lower corporate rate is better for the economy, just look at these graphs". Anyone can find a credentialed economist to back up their position. It's much harder to look at someone straight-faced and say "actually greed is good" and "we would go bankrupt immediately if we had to pay a single extra cent in taxes". I mean they try, and it works on some people, but not as many. And whatever issue can get the most widespread agreement is the one most likely to spark some change.
Because fundamentally, most people don't have issues with people playing by the rules of the game. People don't like shit laws, but they hate kneecapping themselves more.
And more effective? Has the railing about this since the 90s changed anything there?
Again - there is no reason not to do both. Dissatisfaction is not a limited resource. I haven't heard a convincing reason to refrain from criticizing the business practices in question that doesn't simply ignore the practical points I've been making. Re-read my post near the top of this thread.
It is, though. When outrage is misdirected, it lets the true bad guys get off scot–free.
Sure, there are some people who can be angry about everything all day long, but everyone else grows tired to listening to them, and they lose credibility for when it counts.
Their responsibility to "the taxpayer" is a few orders of magnitude less acute than their responsibility to the owners of the company they've been hired to manage.
I completely disagree, but I don't really know how to debate such a fundamental thing. It's such a weird philosophy to put your job over your society. I understand it's common, but it's weird. You can find a new job, but you can't find a new planet.
I just don't want to leave climate change up to the whims of strangers.
If you're in business, you compete with people who put their jobs before society, so you don't really have much choice. Call that a race to the bottom if you want, but it's a race – and races need rules.
They are part of the same minority of society that donates almost all the billions of dollars that ultimately goes to politicians who make the same rules. They are buying the rules and then exploiting them. There is no way to deal with the matter without dealing with them.
I totally agree the legalized corruption in the US is causing huge problems, and preventing the fixes I mentioned above (higher taxes for the rich and for companies, closing loopholes, etc).
If you live in the US, I'd encourage supporting Represent.US, an anti-corruption / good-governance group. There is a critical anti-corruption, pro-democracy bill that they support nearing the floor of the senate now, and they need more people to make calls to voters.
> there has been a cultural failure of some sort that rewards people that think like this, and encourages this kind of behavior.
That “cultural failure” is the consumers’ purchasing at the cheapest price available. How does a manufacturer compete with one that uses sweatshop labor if people choose to buy the sweatshop labor products? How does Lyft compete with Uber if Uber minimizes tax expenses and can price lower than Lyft?
Going after specific companies for legal maneuvers is a waste of time and energy. At the end of the day, the voting populace will punish whoever can be blamed for limiting their consumption, and the voting populace is to blame. Educating and convincing them to support politicians who support better laws is the only solution.
I wouldn't do the same in their shoes and this statement
>obligates executives to take advantage of them (fiduciary duty)
Is a piece of wisdom that exists entirely on the internet unconnected with objective reality. You are obligated to in the general case to serve the shareholders interests but you are absolutely legally entirely able to take a broader and deeper view than this quarters profits and use your own judgement.
Take this situation. Do you really believe that had they NOT done this someone could have gone to court to legally compel the CEO to set up shell corps and tax havens? That isn't have fiduciary duty works. Fiduciary duty means you don't screw the shareholders to help yourself it doesn't mean you are obliged to substitute their judgement for yours or toss out vital but nebulous goals like long term profitability, reputation, and ethics. If they have enough control they have the privilege of firing you not substituting their judgement for yours.
There is also an argument that doing this gives a company certain competitive advantage.
E.g. if (completely made-up example) Lyft were practicing this kind of tax avoidance and Uber did not, the former would have potentially more budget left over to undercut the latter on prices and/or salaries.
So proper laws are still needed for an even playing field. Not that I condone Uber's practice anyway.
I wouldn't do the same thing in their shoes? And mind you I am not trying to claim sainthood here. If it was a few million for following a legal method of tax evasion I'd be highly likely to do so.
After I secured enough money to comfortably retire though, every dollar I got through unethical means would feel less like "securing my future economic safety" and more like "unabashed greed"
And let's not forget that the companies frequently play an outsize role in influencing the written laws. The line between "playing the game" and "cheating" is very fuzzy in real world systems.