Leave aside the moral outrage and any sentence that has "should" in it. You're not being rigorous in your analysis.
Next, think of the tax code as a giant bucket of Lego pieces. Google - and many other multinationals (including very small startup tech companies of the type that spring from the loins of YC) - simply assemble the Lego pieces as they choose.
Looked at as a strictly engineering exercise? No big deal. Hire better engineers (people like me) and get better results (cooler tax-Lego structures).
OK, put on your moral outrage hats again. We are finished with the tax engineering. Let's move on to the social engineering. Because that is what we are talking about when we say "X _should_ pay more to support government functions.". Except for a few people we will have general consensus that a government is good and services need to be paid for. It's just a giant "Not out of my wallet!" game now. Sometimes logic, sometimes "Think of the children," sometimes whatever argument you can muster. All of these devices are used to deflect the tax collector's attention to someone else's wallet.
That is how I look at this topic. And from this perspective I derive two conclusions:
- if you don't like the way multinationals create their Lego structures, change what is in the bucket of Lego pieces. That is the job of Congress, not Google.
- if you plan to change the laws, expect the argument to devolve quickly to uninformed "think of the children" arguments because politics is purely that. No A/B testing is done. Statistical analysis is bent to prove a point, not looked at dispassionately to optimize decisions.
Two last points.
- Every dollar Google makes will eventually go out to employees, vendors, and the government. (At the moment they don't pay a dividend, so the shareholders do not get anything directly). A corporation is not some giant Jabba the Hutt that grows bigger to infinity. It is ultimately just a money collector and distributor.
- the particular game they are playing in fact acts as a net revenue transfer mechanism from the US Treasury to the Irish government. I will have to find the article that describes this so clearly. I'm on my phone right now in downtown LA about to give a speech in a few minutes. I'll be back. (Heh. What a disappointment he turned out to be for California).
Leave aside the moral outrage and any sentence that has "should" in it. You're not being rigorous in your analysis.
Next, think of the tax code as a giant bucket of Lego pieces. Google - and many other multinationals (including very small startup tech companies of the type that spring from the loins of YC) - simply assemble the Lego pieces as they choose.
Looked at as a strictly engineering exercise? No big deal. Hire better engineers (people like me) and get better results (cooler tax-Lego structures).
OK, put on your moral outrage hats again. We are finished with the tax engineering. Let's move on to the social engineering. Because that is what we are talking about when we say "X _should_ pay more to support government functions.". Except for a few people we will have general consensus that a government is good and services need to be paid for. It's just a giant "Not out of my wallet!" game now. Sometimes logic, sometimes "Think of the children," sometimes whatever argument you can muster. All of these devices are used to deflect the tax collector's attention to someone else's wallet.
That is how I look at this topic. And from this perspective I derive two conclusions:
- if you don't like the way multinationals create their Lego structures, change what is in the bucket of Lego pieces. That is the job of Congress, not Google.
- if you plan to change the laws, expect the argument to devolve quickly to uninformed "think of the children" arguments because politics is purely that. No A/B testing is done. Statistical analysis is bent to prove a point, not looked at dispassionately to optimize decisions.
Two last points.
- Every dollar Google makes will eventually go out to employees, vendors, and the government. (At the moment they don't pay a dividend, so the shareholders do not get anything directly). A corporation is not some giant Jabba the Hutt that grows bigger to infinity. It is ultimately just a money collector and distributor.
- the particular game they are playing in fact acts as a net revenue transfer mechanism from the US Treasury to the Irish government. I will have to find the article that describes this so clearly. I'm on my phone right now in downtown LA about to give a speech in a few minutes. I'll be back. (Heh. What a disappointment he turned out to be for California).