Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
You've made some interesting comments and my opinion has shifted a little. But not much. I do recognize that Amazon like any corporation is going to avoid tax as much as it can. What is questionable is that they are allowed to avoid such a huge amount of tax.
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It is the problem of tax policies being set at national levels by individual governments, but applied to corporations which can move at will to any nation they choose. There will always be another Luxembourg ready to offer even lower rates to drag in business, and suck all the tax revenue away from the countries it was actually generated in. For them, it is money for nothing, and because they have a very small local business base, they don't lose any significant current tax income when lowering rates.
And moves to counter that, and have each country 'ring-fence' its financial borders, would drastically hit legitimate business as well.
Also, more fundamentally, the largest corporations between can afford better lawyers and accountants than governments can, so whatever laws are passed, they will find loopholes in them, and whenever those loopholes are closed, others will be poked open.
Up to that point, all's fair in love and war, the more pernicious problem is when those corporations start buying loopholes, by appealing to politicians who are more concerned about their reelection campaign coffers than their electorate.