alt Hacker NewsIt often strikes me as quite the biased and one-sided take when a tax-paying entity is called out by the press for tax avoidance (NOT tax evasion, which is illegal). (yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law).
Previously we've seen "The Secret IRS Files" from Propublica as well as other coverage of tax avoidance that never resulted in tax evasion charges. Coverage wide enough that it's arguably safe to assume that no laws were broken because there was quite the demand for an enforcement response.
The funny thing is that a more accurate title for these pieces would be, "Federal Government Allows [tax-paying entity] a Massive Tax Break." And then the piece would be all about how the senate, congress, and president either explicitly wanted there to be this extreme tax loophole or was incompetent and allowed something they didn't mean to allow.
Folks are continually getting upset and riled up about players in the economic system instead of who and what makes the rules.
An analogous example: everyone got cranky about Martin Shkreli, mostly because he raised prices on Deraprim, although also because many would label him a brash jerk. But he went to jail for finance stuff, not raising prices. Why? Because raising prices in the way he did wasn't something the feds thought was illegal or wasn't something they thought he could be convicted of.
Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal, ok yea that makes sense. If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor. Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.
Replies
It is perfectly fine to be upset about certain lawful behaviors because lawful does not mean good. This does also not exclusively apply to companies, people can be law abiding assholes. And it works in the other direction, too, sometimes unlawful behavior is good behavior.
I was with you, but no, this is where you lost me:
"If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor."
There are people with mindset "I will try to be an overall decent human being and maintain some awareness and empathy of others", and there are the "I will be as much of a selfish asshole as the legal system allows me to, and wreak untold damage in the endless game of whack-a-mole".
I think in fact more of us should be gunning after the second kind :). To paraphrase you, It makes zero sense for me to be OK with fundamentally anti-social, anti-humanity humanoids.
Why have you posted this comment on this article? This article is about something Meta is doing that the author considers illegal. Maybe IRS and courts will agree, maybe not, but either way your comment is simply irrelevant to the situation being reported here.
Important context to add is that those who benefit from such tax breaks turn around and fund with their disproportionate, ill-gotten gains the very candidates who you say we should really be upset with. They also fund the media companies, both social and traditional, that are the propaganda for the status quo. They don't benefit from these laws that create loopholes in a vacuum - they're the very reason the laws continue to have loopholes in the first place!
As they say, "No war except class war", I think we are perfectly justified in being upset with the names in the headlines.
A pattern I notice in well-educated, intellectual people seems like the habitual equivalent of blaming winners at a casino, and using that to give the casino more power.
The puppet on the left hand isn’t to blame, it’s the puppet on the right hand! No, it’s definitely the left. Let’s ask them…wait, they each blame each other.
Yes, we can expect companies to lower their tax bill.
This is not about Zuck it's about the IRS and probable political interference.
you underestimate, I can be very mad at everyone, only limiting factor is if they deserve it
What you’re describing is accepting a low trust society as an inevitability. Many of us don’t want to do that.
>Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal, ok yea that makes sense. If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor. Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.
...why not both?
> If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor.
Just low-trust society things.
Did you read the article? Meta themselves aren't confident that what they're doing is legal, and they're very clear about the fact that it might be clawed back by the IRS because they're abusing a tax credit intended to be used for experimental research by putting their massive data centre build out into that "experimental research" bucket.
If a company's accountants and lawyers are concerned enough to bury disclosures in their securities filings to cover themselves, but the company leadership is brazen enough to proceed anyway, I'd say that's plenty of justification for people to be mad at the executive leadership.
> If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor.
Why not? Society is filled with norms we expect others to follow, from letting pregnant women sit on public transport to open the door for people in wheelchairs, or what not.
Not sure why it's so different about how you pay taxes or what you do with your money? If you're rich and live better than others, it's usually a (good) norm that we expect these people to give away more of their wealth compared to people live paycheck to paycheck.
It also makes sense to get mad at people who break the societal norms about taxes, where the point is that we all fund our society together, and some people pay more, some people pay less, not based on who has the most lawyers to find loopholes, but based on who can actually afford to pay more.
The rules are this way because the billionaire class has ensured that the government made the rules this way.
It is valid to be frustrated _both_ with the billionaires for bribing the government into having these rules _and_ the government for doing it.
It is borderline insanity to admonish people for criticizing the powerful entities who are the reason the loopholes exist.
This is a weird comment in relation to this article.
> yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law
Right, so what is the point of your comment? The article is noting that Meta is really, really pushing the limits, claiming capital investments are "R&D". It is most certainly outright tax evasion, though we all know the US is so hyper-corrupt and busted now that Zuck just needs to call Trump and tell him how great he is and nothing will be done about it. That's ignoring that the IRS was so hollowed out, purposefully, that everyone is going wild with tax evasion because they know it not only won't be caught in the first place, it would never be enforced.
The US is fully and completely into the kleptocracy stage, so some very strange rant about how companies can lawfully use deductions seems perverse.
The problem is that law is a malleable mater and not all interpretation and use should be accepted, there is the spirit and the letter (don't know if it's an usual expression in english).
Dunno muchabout the US tax code but in the french tax code when there is a tax break there are practical conditions and an information intention / context by the legislative assembly in the law project. If french deputies create a tax break to incentivize research and you use it to get a tax break given investment in infrastructure not at all linked to any research, even if you match the practical conditions it's considered an abuse/diverting of the law and the french tax administration can completely cancel your tax break and you'll have to sue them in our administrative justice branch to change their decision.