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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Where would that end? How could anyone be confident that their actions would not land them in jail, if following the letter of the law did not guarantee safety, and judges or juries could decide that their interpretation of the "spirit" of the law was enough to result in a guilty verdict?

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Im not a legal person so I apologize, but how does intent play into this then. If Im climbing with someone and I accidentally drop them and they die, then I have to show that my intent wasn't to murder them right? Can't you make the same argument here, the crime is that apple didn't pay the full taxes it owed the government don't they still have to prove that their intent wasn't dodging taxes?

If the state charges you with murder, the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you intended to kill. You don't have to prove anything. And that's the way it should be.

So why can't this be a scenario of the state charging Apple with tax evasion and the state proving beyond a reasonable doubt that this was their intention?

It's not evasion. They're paying everything they're legally required to pay. If the state proves that they didn't pay what was required by law, they'll pay it, with penalties.

To the extent of the law as it currently exists, but for the artificial scenario they have created the law is ambiguous and we shouldn't expect the law to be exhaustive of every possible permutation. We should be able to use common sense judgement to say they are clearly creating these complex scenarios to just avoid paying taxes.

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