It often strikes me as quite the biased and one-sided take when a tax-paying entity is called out by the press for tax avoidance (NOT tax evasion, which is illegal). (yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law).<p>Previously we've seen "The Secret IRS Files" from Propublica as well as other coverage of tax avoidance that never resulted in tax evasion charges. Coverage wide enough that it's arguably safe to assume that no laws were broken because there was quite the demand for an enforcement response.<p>The funny thing is that a more accurate title for these pieces would be, "Federal Government Allows [tax-paying entity] a Massive Tax Break." And then the piece would be all about how the senate, congress, and president either explicitly wanted there to be this extreme tax loophole or was incompetent and allowed something they didn't mean to allow.<p>Folks are continually getting upset and riled up about players in the economic system instead of who and what makes the rules.<p>An analogous example: everyone got cranky about Martin Shkreli, mostly because he raised prices on Deraprim, although also because many would label him a brash jerk. But he went to jail for finance stuff, not raising prices. Why? Because raising prices in the way he did wasn't something the feds thought was illegal or wasn't something they thought he could be convicted of.<p>Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal, ok yea that makes sense. If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor. Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.
We need both.<p>Public shame and malice towards individuals who violate expected norms is actually a fairly good deterrent toward would-be bad actors. I'm sure there are many millions of instances per day where people decide not to do untoward things because they care about their reputations.<p>But on the flip side, you are also correct. It's important that public attention also be directed towards the systems that incentivize and enable bad behavior, and the people who create those systems. Patching laws, shaping incentives, and empowering a distributed system of judges and courts to handle violations is ultimately much cleaner, fairer, predictable, wide-reaching, and (therefore) more effective than disorganized mob-led shame campaigns.<p>Unfortunately, several things work against this:<p>1. It requires much more time, education, intelligence, and emotional self-control to care about system design over simply shaming others. These four things aren't abundantly common in most populaces.<p>2. Lawmakers and politicians have their own incentives to redirect public attention away from themselves. And they can take advantage of #1 to do this, which is basically what demagoguery is.<p>3. Similarly, media companies have their own incentive, which is to increase clicks and shares and subscribers. And appealing to base emotions with strong headlines works 100x better than discussing complex laws and systems. Research shows that the #1 emotion that leads to sharing online is outrage.
In this case, the established norm is for a business to legally avoid paying as much tax as possible. It's more than just a norm. It is extremely unusual for any business owner to do otherwise. It's 100% up to the government whether they approve this tax break.
At least in the UK, if I overpay my taxes HMRC will issue a refund.<p>I can even give them all my tax money, but if I also give them a list of items they deem to be a tax deduction, they will give me my money back. I don't even need to really ask for it except by putting it in the paperwork. I don't need to say "and therefore I believe I have overpaid by £X".
This. I'd be surprised if there were software/tech companies that didn't actively use the R&D provisions in the tax regulations.<p>The problem is two closely related issues, IMO... First, these rules are probably too broad/vague and easily abused. And second, it's too difficult/costly for the IRS to successfully challenge when a company does abuse these regulations.
Shame I get. There is healthy shame, though difficult to achieve sometimes. Malice you lose me. I see Malice as the intent to hurt retributively. Why do you think malice is needed?
I could hardly agree more.<p>I would say that we get the one (public outrage at specific companies/people) but not the other (focus on the legislation). Unfortunately, the latter has the controlling direct effect.
Simplified messaging can perhaps work. I have come to the conclusion that taking money out of politics is the only way out. "Hate the game, not the player" only works when the player doesn't get to set the rules of the game. Shame those who have enough money to influence politics and either are known to "donate" (bribe) politics or donate darkly (with more money/power should be more transparency). And shame anyone who perpetuates money in politics.
> Public shame and malice towards individuals who violate expected norms is actually a fairly good deterrent toward would-be bad actors. I'm sure there are many millions of instances per day where people decide not to do untoward things because they care about their reputations<p>I do agree for most people. But the problem is that the <i>worst</i> people have no shame. People like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc., used to try to fake humility and act like normal people, but that ship has sailed and now they seem to take glee in acting like shitbags and getting away with it. Which is why we need laws.
How should people find out what the ‘expected norm’ is?
Is there only one set of ‘expected norms’ or multiple sets?
Especially here. If there ever was such a thing as an expected norm in how a multibillion dollar company handles its finance and taxes (a pretty complicated topic that’s quite far removed from normal life), it’s probably exactly what FB is doing.<p>You are the CFO of Meta and you have have a choice to make in your tax reporting: option A and option B. Both are esoteric and don’t relate much to how a normal person pays tax or thinks about finance, both are legal, but option B leads to billions of dollars less in your bill. Would HN posters really choose option A?<p>If there’s a problem it’s that there is so much complexity and so many legal but complicated choices you can make that change how much tax you pay, and only the very rich, and very large corporations, have the ability to explore those options (of course the law is also skewed towards giving them loopholes and tax breaks that don’t apply to a normal person)
There's also selection bias at play here: the press isn't in the business of publishing "everything is boring and normal" stories - the very existence of a headline mentioning some person or org doing something, already implies they are doing something wrong and violating established social norms.<p>Which they probably aren't, half the time, but news services wants you to think they might, because your rage is their ad revenue.
It is perfectly fine to be upset about certain lawful behaviors because lawful does not mean good. This does also not exclusively apply to companies, people can be law abiding assholes. And it works in the other direction, too, sometimes unlawful behavior is good behavior.
But GP comment is not about how you <i>feel</i> about it. It is about where you direct that anger. If you dislike what a powerful entity does, well, we the people are supposed to have a recourse in our representatives. Why precisely is it that we feel like we <i>do not</i>?
I expect everyone to behave nicely even in the absence of laws. The reason that I am not killing people left and right is not because it is illegal to so but because it is immoral. The law is a last resort to disincentivize certain behaviors or hold you responsible after the fact, it is not what should exclusively guide anyone's behavior.
And, carry that forward, what do you expect to happen to people who do not act according to your definition of nice? You either accept they are different, or try to prohibit the activity.<p>Jumping from "money making via tax breaks" to "murder" is quite a jump, also. These are along a spectrum of choices.
But companies are not part of "everyone". Companies are amoral. They have no concept of morality, only legality. If doing X produces Y profit and is legal, they will do X. If doing X produces Y profit, but is illegal and the fine times the probability of getting caught is Z, then they will do X if Y > Z. Shame and morals have nothing to do with the equation.
> The reason that I am not killing people left and right is not because it is illegal to so but because it is immoral.<p>And if it wasn't illegal, some immoral entity would outcompete you by killing all of their rivals (including you).<p>The whole point of the law is to standardize morals so immoral actors don't gain advantage.
Not necessarily. Humans aren't really capable of living entirely solo. We rely on a society - even a small tribe - to provide resources that we struggle to make. We evolved for tribes and tribalism to support our survival.<p>People who commit murder wantonly are generally untrusted and/or shunned. Being banished is really dangerous, so people tend not to go on more killing sprees even without formal laws
All true, but you look at it from the wrong angle.<p>Yes, people are naturally social and naturally enforce social norms. But this natural ability <i>doesn't scale beyond a tribe</i> (see also: Dunbar's numbers). Our natural social patterns only work when everyone in the group knows everyone else and they all interact frequenlty.<p>Laws didn't invent morality or punishing antisocial behavior. Laws are what allows them to <i>scale</i> and support societies of millions.
Sounds like you’re lazy?<p>‘Everyone should be good because it’s the right thing to do, and making them not be murderous assholes is exhausting’.<p>Which hey, that would be nice, but it’s clearly not the case - as demonstrated by the non-zero murder rate all the time.
> The reason that I am not killing people left and right is not because it is illegal to so but because it is immoral.<p>Evolution and natural selection does not care about morality.<p>Why should humans?<p>“because humans are better than apes” …? Weak argument.
Because we have free will and choose to subject to morality. We have what we have today <i>because</i> of morality (in some form), not in spite of it.<p>Without some moral system, we would live like every other animal, and don’t mistake that for a judgement.
People like to believe they live moral lives, unlike animals. But when the system breaks down, people quickly start behaving like animals - the ones who don't gets killed rather quickly.<p>This has been presented in fiction countless times, and those fiction is not made up from thin air.
All human behavior, including the way humans universally have a sense of right and wrong, is the result of evolution and natural selection on some level. Morality isn't some concept cooked up by aliens, it's a naturally emergent behavior and not just in humans.
Evolution does not care about morality, but it did create the faculty of morality on humans
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This like saying, "If you don't like the king making the rules why are you in a monarchy, hmmmm?"
Unlimited corporate spending in politics?
> Why precisely is it that we feel like we do not?<p>Because we don’t, our representatives work for companies like Meta, not ordinary people.
Would you agree that public/consumer sentiment towards corporate behavior can change that behavior?
Can it? Sure, sometimes, to some extent.<p>I think a better question is, how effective is that compared to legal requirements.
Partially because organizations like Facebook spend heavily to ensure they're not taxed fairly.
>> But GP comment is not about how you feel about it. It is about where you direct that anger.<p>Don't worry, my anger is limitless and I can direct it at both corporations <i>and</i> corporations at the same time.
I was with you, but no, this is where you lost me:<p>"If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor."<p>There are people with mindset "I will try to be an overall decent human being and maintain some awareness and empathy of others", and there are the "I will be as much of a selfish asshole as the legal system allows me to, and wreak untold damage in the endless game of whack-a-mole".<p>I think in fact more of us should be gunning after the second kind :). To paraphrase you, It makes zero sense for me to be OK with fundamentally anti-social, anti-humanity humanoids.
I think you're both right, it depends a lot more on the specific situation. For example if Corporation A finds a loophole that allows them to dump toxic waste in the river, let's be pissed at <i>both</i> sides. If Corporation B reacts to incentives in the tax code to build an AI data center, you can be mad at data centers if you believe they poison the earth and waste resources, but you should also be mad at the government who created those incentives in the first place.
Consider also that in the US, corporations have an outsized influence on the law. In your example, Corporation B may not only be taking advantage of incentives in the tax code, but it may have had a hand in creating them as well.
I agree, and they're not incompatible:<p>1. By being upset at a behaviour, we can start the machine / process to amend the laws. The laws are not permanent, universal, absolute, or same as morality/utility. Noticing undesirable behaviour and raising a stink is how the laws get amended.<p>2. BUT/AND... laws will forever play a game of catchup, <i>particularly</i> in modern fast-paced technology environment. So I disagree with the "Tech exploiters are heroes, be mad at the law that allowed them to create torment nexus" - no, thank you. Let's in fact <i>not</i> worship emotionally-unintelligent semi-sociopathic assholes (pardon my language:) who misunderstood all the Scifi they read as kids - they crave that worship and praise, so let's withhold them please. Same goes for corporations - it's unbelievable how many people shrug their shoulders and go "well the purpose of corporation is to make profit above else" - corporation is not some universal external law, "a corporation" is a human construct and thus also malleable by humans and it's up to us to figure out what equilibrium is optimal :).
In relationships between people one interacts with directly, I agree: there are "social contracts" that aren't laws that people in the USA generally follow. Knowing about them and not following them makes someone a jerk.<p>Wreaking "untold damage" sounds like something where a law should exist to prevent it unless there's some incredibly important counter benefit.
Welcome to Hacker News with all the temporarily embarrassed millionaires
The problem is that law is a malleable mater and not all interpretation and use should be accepted, there is the spirit and the letter (don't know if it's an usual expression in english).<p>Dunno muchabout the US tax code but in the french tax code when there is a tax break there are practical conditions and an information intention / context by the legislative assembly in the law project. If french deputies create a tax break to incentivize research and you use it to get a tax break given investment in infrastructure not at all linked to any research, even if you match the practical conditions it's considered an abuse/diverting of the law and the french tax administration can completely cancel your tax break and you'll have to sue them in our administrative justice branch to change their decision.
"spirit and the letter (of the law)" is a common phrase in English. For the next part IANAL.<p>It appears in the US that generally the letter of the law matters more in legal proceedings than the spirit of what was written. Though there is sometimes debate (especially around the constitution) as to what the words meant at the time the law was written which give a little legal freeway to the spirit. From what I have seen though these cases generally deal more with rights/civil liberties than laws which affect corporations/tax codes/processes/etc. There is greater freedom to interpret the spirit of the law in criminal cases (e.g. jury nullification).
That sounds like a nightmare for the business owner, and a huge boon for the legal industry (aka lawyers). Uncertainty/ambiguity in law is poisonous for someone trying to operate in the law, and that goes for everyone from big corp to individuals just trying to function in society.
These are called "General Anti-Avoidance" rules. The UK calls theirs a "General Anti-Abuse" rule but it's the same idea, probably better branding. The consequence of not having them is that huge corporations just don't pay your taxes because hey, what do you mean you wanted us to pay taxes, if you provide any means by which I can avoid that surely I must be intended to avoid it, right ?<p>It's not a "nightmare" unless your goal is to avoid paying taxes or the rule was very incompetently drafted. If you want to spend $5M figuring out how to avoid paying $5M in taxes and then moan that it was expensive, remember to factor in the price of the minuscule violins other tax payers will be needing.
It's a nightmare because one prosecutor may think that building out infrastructure for a technology that really might not be worth the cost is a perfectly valid research expense and a different one may not. Similar to how one person might think that the social safety net is for someone who lost the ability to provide for themselves through no fault of their own, and another might think that the social safety net is for anyone who doesn't want to work. These things need to be written down clearly expressing the intent so that society can understand and make choices appropriately. Like, if the tax code said you can have a 401k account and put a reasonable amount in it per year, then some people might think they can dump $400,000 tax free per year into their 401k while another thinks $16,500 is a reasonable amount.
Which is why people write articles like this... to draw attention to these ambiguities and how much of a boon they are for businesses with lots of resources to navigate and exploit them.
I see the article as almost obsessively focused on the details and intricacies about how Meta is attempting to avoid taxes, what the timelines are, who's involved, etc. It seems written to be read like a thriller almost: to what lengths could this evil corporation go to further their schemes? There seems to be exactly 1 paragraph about when, why, and how the laws in question came to be:<p>> The tax break dates to the first year of the Reagan administration, when Japan...<p>It seems to me that there could be a lot more discussion and analysis on what led to the laws, who was involved, efforts since to amend them, etc.
For better or for worse, keeping someone's attention is a prerequisite to giving them information.<p>More generally, I'm not sure that an analysis of <i>a particular</i> set of laws, loopholes, amendments, etc is all that valuable for a general audience. The reality is there is an ~infinite number of these things. It's actually much <i>more</i> important to understand the intensity of effort and sophistication that goes into finding and exploiting them.
Law isn’t mathematics, it always requires interpretation. That’s why we have human judges instead of flowcharts and lookup tables.
In the EU it's typical to keep to the spirit of the law, not necessarily to the letter. It makes it less game-able. If the tax break is for research and you use it for research and not "well, technically it could be considered research if you squint hard enough", you'll be fine.
> Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal, ok yea that makes sense. If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor. Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.<p>I'll remember this next time I get cheated on. After all, cheating is legal, so why should I be mad. Thank you.
> Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.<p>We are. It is <i>their class</i> that is in charge of the legal system. The loopholes exist for them <i>because they are rich and rich people own the government</i>. To pretend that there is a meaningful distinction between Mark Zuckerberg and Chuch Schumer just because one is "in government" and the other is a "private citizen" is absurd and naive. Chuck Schumer and the rest of the legislature <i>work for</i> Zuckerberg, et. al.<p>It's like saying "you can be mad at OJ's lawyer, but not OJ". OJ hired the lawyer, his actions are for OJ's benefit.
There is also a third perspective to this: explicit tax loopholes and breaks are usually introduced for a reason, and that reason is almost never to incentivize bad behavior, at least not overtly (if it is, you have a much different and more acute problem on your hands). It's typically to counterbalance some burden[0] or incentivize behavior <i>desired</i> by the policy makers.<p>So the question to ask is, what behavior is this trying to incentivize?<p>And now the controversial part that's always missed: could that behavior be, in fact, <i>good for society and the very reason for the loophole to exist</i>? Could this - or any other case with similar headline - be just a "WONTFIX, works exactly as it should"?<p>I ask that because a headline that has "${AI company}" and "data center" in it already blinds most readers in tech circles with rage and shuts down their critical thinking.<p>--<p>[0] - Possibly introduced by the same legislation - it's often better to pass a broad rule and special-case some specific exceptions, than try to predict and itemize every corner case in detail.
Important context to add is that those who benefit from such tax breaks turn around and fund with their disproportionate, ill-gotten gains the very candidates who you say we should <i>really</i> be upset with. They also fund the media companies, both social and traditional, that are the propaganda for the status quo. They don't benefit from these laws that create loopholes in a vacuum - they're the very reason the laws continue to have loopholes in the first place!<p>As they say, "No war except class war", I think we are perfectly justified in being upset with the names in the headlines.
Oh yes, and also the <i>data centers</i>! Evil!<p>Seriously though, while I agree it's all ultimately class war, I'd pay attention to the fact that everyone's just getting enraged because <i>some news source says you should</i>, and we all know that news publishing is an absolute paragon of truth and accuracy.<p>The actual truth here is probably just: working as intended, for perfectly good, mundane reasons, and you would even think it's wise if you read about it in an econ book, but because it says "${AI company}" and "data centers" and is a news headline, everyone is suddenly full of rage.
Yes, that's really a problem. Before we can fix a lot of taxation fairness problems, we really have to fix campaign funding fairness.
Why have you posted this comment on this article? This article is about something Meta is doing that the author considers illegal. Maybe IRS and courts will agree, maybe not, but either way your comment is simply irrelevant to the situation being reported here.
I suspect the commenter didn’t actual read the article, but is inferring from past articles.<p>Some of the NYT’s past articles on accounting practices have been… strange to say the least.<p>This one from the last year on SpaceX was one of my favorites, with one of the experts claiming without evidence that carrying forward operating losses was only ever intended for companies struggling in difficult times:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/technology/spacex-musk-government-contracts-taxes.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/technology/spacex-musk-go...</a><p>But yeah, this article seems to be pointing out something that may be legitimately wrong, and Meta has disclosed that as a risk.
No that's not what's happening here. The commenter:<p>> (yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law).<p>then<p>> The funny thing is that a more accurate title for these pieces would be, "Federal Government Allows [tax-paying entity] a Massive Tax Break."<p>The funny thing is more accurate titles for articles that are unlike this one is something unlike this one's title? Sure, whatever.
For TFA, I propose:<p>"A Federal Law Gray Area Allows Meta a Potentially Massive Tax Break."<p>... or something similar.<p>The focus could be less about Meta and more about the law. It's not like there's something special about Meta. The vast majority of corporations would do this if it was profitable.
I wouldn't say the author thinks it is illegal. I think the author is reporting on Meta's tax approach that is "untested" and possibly will be challenged by the IRS.<p>Regardless, the overwhelming majority of the article is about Meta's actions: when, why, how. Very little of it is about the laws governing the taxes, who passed them, when, what's been proposed to amend them, etc.
You must be new here. When has a Hacker News ever commented anything related to the article itself? Just be gracious that the top comment isn’t a dear diary comment that so frequently appears.
Betting on people not reading the article (can you blame them? It’s behind paywall) and will just subscribe to the vaguely agreeable (to some) view they’re presenting, in order to sweep the substantial story under the rug. And it’s working.
<i>Why have you posted this comment on this article?</i><p>It's a standard deflection tactic.<p>"Hey, don't discuss the substance of the article. Let's talk about something only slightly related, and I'll write it in a controversial manner and with lots of unnecessary text so everyone gets off track and nobody remembers that Meta has gotten caught — once again — being bad for society!"
Do you want a caste system and monopoly or free markets and democracy.<p>If you want free markets and a voice in society then you should have a little outrage that the system is designed to concentrate and confer advantages. It’s not that avoiding taxes is illegal, it’s that it’s a bad policy choice
I had the exact same reaction.<p>But then I remembered it's not like companies get these tax breaks fair and square, through pure chance, or through an arm's-length evaluation of the benefits of encouraging/discouraging these activities for the country. They get them through influencing legislators via lobbying, campaign contributions, etc.<p>So: no, the blame very much boomerangs back on them. If they merely happened to be eligible for tax breaks they had no hand in, it would absolutely be unfair to blame them, but that's not how such multi-billion-dollar corporations generally work.
You read the whole article and think the authors concluded it was legal? you have to read between the lines when they write "aggressive tax strategies." Frequently newspaper legal departments do not want journalists to use the word "fraud" because that is actionable under libel laws.
Most likely those tax breaks/loopholes exist because of lobbying by said companies.
Does this guy not know these big corps influence politics to get the tax breaks?
A pattern I notice in well-educated, intellectual people seems like the habitual equivalent of blaming winners at a casino, and using that to give the casino more power.
you underestimate, I can be very mad at everyone, only limiting factor is if they deserve it
To an extent it's depressing to see people being so average to create apps or platforms and then become very sharp at distorting the latest tech for .. financial optimization.
I can absolutely direct anger towards someone who displays willful anti-social behavior, regardless of whether or not it is legal.
Yes, we can expect companies to lower their tax bill.<p>This is not about Zuck it's about the IRS and probable political interference.
The framing is around Meta avoiding paying taxes not about IRS and political interference. Its written in a way to cast shame as an implied bad actor.
Yes, that's what I mean. That said - Meta is likely knowingly breaking rules, which is unethical, they deserve blame as well, but the framing should be more holistic.
Meta is the what makes this more interesting. It tells the story of a single company highlighting the overall problem. This is journalism 101. Anyone reading this is going to understand the issue isn't that Meta is breaking a law, but rather that the laws are setup in such a way that Meta can use them like this, and probably has undo influence to get it written this way.<p>Further, while they are doing this, it might not be what lawmakers intended.<p>Sorry, but this is all basic journalism going back decades.
Why do you think the IRS is structured the way it is? Zuck and his cohort regularly contribute to defang the IRS. Or did you miss the part where he donated to the president and then the IRS became significantly less capable of going after the largest tax avoiders?<p>> This is not about Zuck it's about the IRS and probable political interference.<p>This is not about Zuck, it's just about the probable political interference that Zuck funded.
In the absence of a willing regulatory body we poison public sentiment against these massive companies not paying their fair share. Both approaches are valid.
> quite the biased and one-sided take<p>The bias and side of arguing how the public good is being circumvented -- is that incorrect?
The puppet on the left hand isn’t to blame, it’s the puppet on the right hand! No, it’s definitely the left. Let’s ask them…wait, they each blame each other.
It's just fraud, but they just know the current government will not prosecute so it's 'legal'. If they do, eventually, get held accountable the fine will likely be less than the savings.
> Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.<p>Well who paid them to put the loopholes in? It wasn't regular people like you.
> Coverage wide enough that it's arguably safe to assume that no laws were broken because there was quite the demand for an enforcement response.<p>This seems incredibly naive in light of what we’ve seen with the Epstein Files
Musk, Zuck, others do plenty of illegal, immoral, and antisocial acts. Maybe this specific instance is merely shady and underhanded.<p>The tax evasion label is a handy shibboleth for [b|t]illionaire cohort.<p>No ruleset can cover every edge case, eventuality. Is hacking the tax code honoring the spirit of the law? Is it fair, just, good citizenship?<p>IANAL but I think there's a legal term for abiding by the obvious intent of the ruleset, public good, social norms.<p>PS- A take cut for me is a tax hike for thee (and your children's children). All this neoliberal supply side voodoo economics nonsense a) does not grow the economy and b) creates deficits which condemn our children to lives of unending usury.
>Folks get mad at Musk, Zuckerberg, etc... if they're doing something illegal, ok yea that makes sense. If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor. Be mad at the people/entities who created the legal loopholes and laws.<p>...why not both?
I hate to break this to you, but it’s the same people. Zuck pays lobbyists to pay off his politicians, who write in the loopholes Zuck wants. The US is considered a “flawed democracy” for a reason. The current tax system is designed plutocratically.<p>I will call out cronyism when I see it, regardless of whether bought politicians have decided it’s legal or not.<p>Let’s not be naive here.
> If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor.<p>Why not? Society is filled with norms we expect others to follow, from letting pregnant women sit on public transport to open the door for people in wheelchairs, or what not.<p>Not sure why it's so different about how you pay taxes or what you do with your money? If you're rich and live better than others, it's usually a (good) norm that we expect these people to give away more of their wealth compared to people live paycheck to paycheck.<p>It also makes sense to get mad at people who break the societal norms about taxes, where the point is that we all fund our society together, and some people pay more, some people pay less, not based on who has the most lawyers to find loopholes, but based on who can actually afford to pay more.
What you’re describing is accepting a low trust society as an inevitability. Many of us don’t want to do that.
> If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor.<p>Just low-trust society things.
It cuts both ways.<p>Musk volunteered to illegally fire a bunch of federal employees on the grounds that gosh darn it, the deficit's too damned high, we need to get these troglodyte federal employees off the payroll and whip this place into shape and run it like a for-profit business because those are never ever inefficient.<p>If he's going to leave a bunch of people without a paycheck and health insurance through arbitrary firings because we're too deep in debt as a country, then he can also recognize that there's never been a business that has turned around a deficit without increasing revenues.<p>Zuck's not a part of the firings but seems to at least humor such downsizing efforts while existing in the MAGA orbit.<p>Trump himself may very well have committed tax evasion when he claimed a write-off for a casino that he had an interest in while also taking a benefit from the process.<p>They all do it with the same excuse: money in private hands is better at creating economic growth than money in government hands. There's a point at which this is no longer true, especially when you take into account government debt.<p>If people just paid their g*ddamned taxes we're in a much shallower fiscal hole as a country than we are now. We're talking hundreds of billions in revenue each year [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/the-tax-gap-what-it-is-and-how-it-affects-federal-revenue/" rel="nofollow">https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/the-tax-gap-what-it-i...</a>
The rules are this way because the billionaire class has ensured that the government made the rules this way.<p>It is valid to be frustrated _both_ with the billionaires for bribing the government into having these rules _and_ the government for doing it.<p>It is borderline insanity to admonish people for criticizing the powerful entities who are the reason the loopholes exist.
This is a weird comment in relation to this article.<p>> yes TFA implies that Meta is breaking the law, I'm not talking about situations where entities break the law<p>Right, so what is the point of your comment? The article is noting that Meta is really, <i>really</i> pushing the limits, claiming capital investments are "R&D". It is most certainly outright tax evasion, though we all know the US is so hyper-corrupt and busted now that Zuck just needs to call Trump and tell him how great he is and nothing will be done about it. That's ignoring that the IRS was so hollowed out, purposefully, that everyone is going wild with tax evasion because they know it not only won't be caught in the first place, it would never be enforced.<p>The US is fully and completely into the kleptocracy stage, so some very strange rant about how companies can lawfully use deductions seems perverse.
Did you read the article? Meta themselves aren't confident that what they're doing is legal, and they're very clear about the fact that it might be clawed back by the IRS because they're abusing a tax credit intended to be used for experimental research by putting their massive data centre build out into that "experimental research" bucket.<p>If a company's accountants and lawyers are concerned enough to bury disclosures in their securities filings to cover themselves, but the company leadership is brazen enough to proceed anyway, I'd say that's plenty of justification for people to be mad at the executive leadership.
> If folks are mad about actions that are legal, it makes zero sense to be mad at the actor.<p>Why does it make zero sense to be mad about immoral behavior from greedy people? If I see somebody come into my grocery store and grab every sample on a sample tray and stuff them in their pockets, I'm going to be upset at them, not that there aren't any laws against sample hoarding.<p>Laws can't hope to account for every single action we want to discourage people from doing. In the meta case, they do account for it, and they're likely breaking the law.