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Their target audiences are the people who will read the headline only, the people who get excited about their lump sum tax refund each year, the people who have little idea what other taxes are levied on business operations, and people who have illogical and/or ideological gripes about capitalism in general. I really don't know why business journalists cater so much to some of these audiences, since the combined social repercussions of such misunderstandings can't possibly be beneficial to business on the long term.

Yes, US tax law compels and drives Tesla's behavior. We tax cigarettes, we tax beer - we tax bad behavior in the hope of positive outcomes. From that perspective, it would be considered bad behavior if a corporation does not utilize tax law to reduce tax burden.

Now it may be that the definition of "good" corporate behavior is shifting, but until the changed definition is reflected in tax law, it makes no sense to criticize the corporation who is only behaving in the manner tax law provides.

I suggest you read the article before being so ignorant and dismissive. At no point does the article suggest Tesla be taxed on revenue. What it accurately points out is that Tesla suspiciously makes a tonne of money but just not in the US in a way that really obviously suggests they're just shifting their profits over seas using accounting tricks.

What you describe is straight up not what the journalists are suggesting happened, and given the article is quite short, I don't know why you spent time responding to it if you couldn't be bothered to read it.

Personal attacks and name-calling will get you banned here. You can make your substantive points without any of that, so please do.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: we've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26381193. Not cool.

It doesnt point out that Tesla makes "a tonne of money but just not in the US", it says that "There could be two explanations".

One being that Tesla is using the standard robber-baron corporate practice of structuring its business in ways that income is reported from overseas. It would be pretty great if this investigative journalist did the first part in that title and reported this information.

The second possibility that is reported is that Tesla has been losing money at home, turning profits only after it has outsourced some manufacturing to China, where mfg scaling happens in nearly every industry. This is what gp is responding to and is in the article.

What you describe is straight up not what the journalists are suggesting happened.

This story isn't about Tesla doing an irish dip or whatever its called, it is for sure about the US Tax code and how it services the global "Prisoner's Dilemma" of taxation, billionaire income, and manufacturing. The title of the article can be shortened to: "Musk paid income tax and Tesla didn't."

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