<story><title>The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy – It Didn’t Go Well</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>Re: the term &amp;quot;abuse&amp;quot; rather than a more concrete term like &amp;quot;violation.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;About 10 years back, Bono (of U2) was being interviewed on irish tv. They asked about U2&amp;#x27;s business interests (real estate and hotels), taxes, and overseas holding companies... with a &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;why don&amp;#x27;t you pay taxes in ireland&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; implication.&lt;p&gt;Bono started with a generic &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;U2 is a Businezss&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; answer but he ended with a (IMO) an honest point that people avoid making.. because it&amp;#x27;s kind of an admission of guilt:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Look... We (ireland) manipulate our tax rules for all sorts of gain^. How can it be ok for the country but not U2?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re an extreme example, but not that extreme. American politicians have also been big believers in complex tax reforms&amp;#x2F;policies as a way of tweaking all sorts of economic results.&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t have it both ways. Either we have a &amp;quot;the rules are the rules&amp;quot; approach or we have a principled approach. You can&amp;#x27;t appeal to the &amp;quot;spirit&amp;quot; of a soulless ruleset.&lt;p&gt;^We have a highly &amp;quot;engineered&amp;quot; tax system, designed to encourage foreign revenue to be silmultaneously booked and not booked in ireland. &amp;gt;30% of ireland&amp;#x27;s gdp is Leprechaun money, according to Paul Krugman &amp;amp; some oecd economists. It&amp;#x27;s here, but not real. Try to touch it, and it will vanish.&lt;p&gt;A lot of these rules relate to IP which is why the biggest companies utlizing irish tax shenanigans are apple, google and other techcos. Music is also IP.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colanderman</author><text>&amp;gt; You can&amp;#x27;t appeal to the &amp;quot;spirit&amp;quot; of a soulless ruleset&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a simple razor: if the people who wrote the rules, upon learning of what you are doing, would likely have written the rules differently to make illegal what you are doing, it&amp;#x27;s against the &amp;quot;spirit&amp;quot; of the rules.&lt;p&gt;Example: if some tax code says, people who make below $100k must pay $10k in taxes, and people who make above $100k must pay $20k, paying someone $99,999 to avoid extra taxes is a foreseeable consequence and therefore not an unethical loophole. However, paying someone exactly $100k so they fall in neither bracket and thus need not pay any taxes is probably not what the policymakers intended; they would surely have amended the rules had they had this pointed out to them before enacting this tax code.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this requires being a judge of intent, but what ethical framework doesn&amp;#x27;t have grey areas?</text></comment>
<story><title>The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy – It Didn’t Go Well</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-internal-revenue-service-global-high-wealth-audits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>Re: the term &amp;quot;abuse&amp;quot; rather than a more concrete term like &amp;quot;violation.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;About 10 years back, Bono (of U2) was being interviewed on irish tv. They asked about U2&amp;#x27;s business interests (real estate and hotels), taxes, and overseas holding companies... with a &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;why don&amp;#x27;t you pay taxes in ireland&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; implication.&lt;p&gt;Bono started with a generic &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;U2 is a Businezss&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; answer but he ended with a (IMO) an honest point that people avoid making.. because it&amp;#x27;s kind of an admission of guilt:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Look... We (ireland) manipulate our tax rules for all sorts of gain^. How can it be ok for the country but not U2?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re an extreme example, but not that extreme. American politicians have also been big believers in complex tax reforms&amp;#x2F;policies as a way of tweaking all sorts of economic results.&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t have it both ways. Either we have a &amp;quot;the rules are the rules&amp;quot; approach or we have a principled approach. You can&amp;#x27;t appeal to the &amp;quot;spirit&amp;quot; of a soulless ruleset.&lt;p&gt;^We have a highly &amp;quot;engineered&amp;quot; tax system, designed to encourage foreign revenue to be silmultaneously booked and not booked in ireland. &amp;gt;30% of ireland&amp;#x27;s gdp is Leprechaun money, according to Paul Krugman &amp;amp; some oecd economists. It&amp;#x27;s here, but not real. Try to touch it, and it will vanish.&lt;p&gt;A lot of these rules relate to IP which is why the biggest companies utlizing irish tax shenanigans are apple, google and other techcos. Music is also IP.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baddox</author><text>&amp;gt; You can&amp;#x27;t appeal to the &amp;quot;spirit&amp;quot; of a soulless ruleset.&lt;p&gt;This is a great point that I always try to inject into conversations about “tax avoidance.” People often claim that taking advantage of “loopholes” is ethically equivalent to straight up illegal tax evasion, but that claim implies that companies need to “know” the “correct ethical amount” for them to contribute.</text></comment>