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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

But mom and pop coffee shops are not making gazillions in profit and syphoning that off in weird accounting schemes to other territories.

It's not avoiding a reasonable amount of tax that is annoying to most people. It is the transparent exploitation of loopholes to evade tax that is annoying.

Eg: Starbucks has to pay starbucks to use the brand starbucks, which means starbucks pays less corporation tax here, but more in the country where they've registered the company that owns the starbucks brand. (Which just happens to be an office in a building in a country with a low corporation tax rate.)

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> It's not avoiding a reasonable amount of tax that is annoying to most people. It is the transparent exploitation of loopholes to evade tax that is annoying.

I guess I just don't understand that viewpoint. I would be shocked if a company wasn't using legal means to reduce its expenses. The problem isn't companies using loopholes, it's that there are loopholes in the first place.

Big companies like loopholes like this because they have the advantage in using them (lots of accountants) and in the US many voters like them because closing them is "raising taxes". At the end of the day it's a gift to large corporations at the expense of small businesses and startups.

> I guess I just don't understand that viewpoint.

Bob should be paying 40% tax. Bob uses normal legal means and reduces his tax burden to 25%. Some people think he's a but cheeky; most people don't really care (or are jealous that he has an accountant); some people say "good on you!"

Ann should be paying 40% tax. Ann uses a bunch of weird interpretations of tax law to squeeze through loopholes. Ann has to keep changing her finances because the loopholes keep changing. Ann pays about 0.5%. Ann then claims that she can hire a cleaner, and so we should be grateful that the cleaner pays PAYE and can buy goods which will have VAT.

At the same time as Ann and Bob are avoiding tax everyone is going through tough times; their jobs are at risk, their services are being cut.

Everyone knows that rich people and companies avoid some tax. Most people really don't care, so long as some kind of tax is being paid.

Hear, hear! But mom and pop coffee shops are not making gazillions in profit and syphoning that off in weird accounting schemes to other territories.

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