I get the spreadsheet. I get that there should not be two answers. What I'd ask you is where is your moral compass? Where do you think the taxes should be?
But if we borrow a lesson from moral philosophy just to help us with that thought – Descartes universality principle might help us: If everybody (corps, and individuals) avoided tax, would our system still work? Would it be a system that encourages growth (a requirement for capitalist enterprise)? Would our governments revenue system completely dissolve? Thus our governments completely dissolve? Is "Taxes aren't a moral issue" equivalent to "I want pure free market anarchy"?
Great business idea: Create a corporation that represents employees, with offices in every country. It then signs your employment contract, pays you in a 0 income tax territory and does all the same funny money games Apple et al do.
Everybody should avoid taxes as long as they stay withing the law, particularly corporations that have a fiduciary duty to do so.
It's moral, usually, to follow the law. But companies like Apple are following the law. Apple already pays billions in tax, far more than it uses in services. Even by that argument Apple isn't doing anything immoral by avoiding more tax.
Bullshit, the concept of fairness is a universal moral.
The report found that Irish officials essentially “reverse-engineered” Apple’s tax bill by first discussing with company representatives the size of the profit they wanted from the Irish branch. Apple’s own tax adviser acknowledged there was “no scientific basis” for the figures, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/business/international/eur...
There's nothing objective the concept of fairness, particularly when it comes to taxes. Taxes are almost completely arbitrary, depending more on what the government in question thinks it can actually collect than anything else.
It's pretty easy to make the case corporations shouldn't be taxed at all. A corporation is nothing more than a group of people that have pooled their resources to make money, after all, and they're already taxed as individuals when profits are disbursed. How is that fair?