The entire point of having a representative democracy is that the representatives are supposed to look out for the best interests of the voters when making laws and regulations. If they write laws that benefit multi-billion dollar companies at the expense of everyone else than the representatives aren't doing their job correctly and need to be set straight by the voters.
The reason why the quote about tax minimization is BS is that the government still has to pay its bills. If every rich corporation is taking advantage of every conceivable loophole, and lobbying for ever more loopholes then the share of the bill starts to fall on the shoulders of everyone else, who doesn't have the time or money or both to lobby for special treatment. And that is unfair.
OTOH, there has to be some balance especially with the amounts of money we're talking about, or corporations will stop trying lobbyists and start hiring white collar crooks to hide their money. Which is why the proper place to settle this is in the legislature where everyone gets at least some way to sort out who pays and how much.
I am just curious, can you find a concrete example of where the interests of the people and state were put above the interests of the lobby groups of the big corporations?
We definitely should not throw up our hands! But one of the first steps in fixing the problem is to convince more people that there actually is a problem, and that it is not bad or hypocritical to oppose the use of tax loopholes. That's why I bristle whenever that quote shows up here; it's a deliberate effort to convince people that there's not even a problem. Hacker News seems to have no problem understanding that "legality != morality" when it comes to drugs, so I don't understand why it's so much harder to grasp re: taxation.
I think the quote is used to point out that Apple did nothing (legally) wrong by following the existing law. It seems to be appropriate.
Do I think corporations should be paying more in taxes? Sure. But Learned Hand's point is still worth considering, especially in a climate where many think everyone should pay more taxes.
I say, OK, you first. There's a line on the tax form where you can voluntarily pay more. Put your money where your mouth is, I say.
> I think the quote is used to point out that Apple did nothing (legally) wrong by following the existing law.
I think you're simply wrong here. The quote very clearly refers to morality, not legality[0], so I criticize it on moral grounds.
> I say, OK, you first. There's a line on the tax form where you can voluntarily pay more. Put your money where your mouth is, I say.
Funny you should bring this up! This is the HN corporate tax argument I hate second-most, after the Learned Hand quote. It's a tu quoque fallacy that's simply used as a gag order to pre-emptively shut down any debate on the issue, since obviously no one meets that standard.
[0] And even if it didn't, that's how it's used in practice when it's posted here.
Learned Hand's remarks are moral in the sense that he says there is nothing sinister (wrong or evil) in following the tax law by arranging your affairs to pay the least, and also that those who say it is immoral to do so are wrong (in the legal sense). But it was a legal opinion rendered by a Supreme Court justice. (Sorry, I don't recall the particulars of the case he was addressing.)
As to the tu quoque fallacy, that is a moral argument, not a legal one. If you want to pass laws that only target some but not others, there is a moral judgment there. If you argue against doing so by pointing out that the advocates of such laws would not like to have them applied to themselves, that is a reasonable response to such an argument to highlight the hypocrisy of that position.
The bigger issue is what is usually implied by the quote, which is a sort of naturalistic fallacy of law. Namely, that whatever is legal is moral, and therefore by implication changing the law would be immoral.
The quote doesn't say that whatever is legal is moral. It makes a specific judgement that arranging your affairs to keep taxes as low as possible is not immoral, and it points out that everybody does this, rich and poor, corporations and people alike, and that demanding others pay more than their required amount is hypocritical and sanctimonious.
Yes, I agree. But let's not slander Learned Hand by attributing to him the intentions of those who quote him. In fact, compared to some more recent justices, I am confident that he would have filed outraged dissenting opinions in recent cases where the law made by representatives was set aside and, in some cases, new law was imposed from the bench.
How are you supposed to figure out the morality of something when there are hundreds of pages of very special case rules for how to follow the tax law?
Who is corrupt, who creates the regulatory capture, and how do the people in a democracy correct that? Or do we just throw up our hands?