Introducing iRS from Apple, its new corporate tax evasion product, with all the sleek simplicity and hip commercials that you have come to expect from this company.
As some commenters pointed out in response to my post on Apple’s elaborate tax avoidance schemes, they can do this because the tax code allows them to do so. And that is true, yet another example of how the oligarchy looks after its own, with politicians doing favors for business and getting favors in return. As The Daily Show explains, that is how we end up with a highly complicated tax code that only the very rich and powerful know how to manipulate for their benefit.
(This clip aired on May 22, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
To paraphrase a quotation from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, we have a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
This reminds me of some arguments I once had with someone who claimed that tax breaks are not subsidies. I argued that they had the same financial effect. I also remember someone arguing that tax breaks mean less government, even though tax breaks can be interpreted as governments picking winners and losers with what to award a tax break for, and what not to.
I remember asking if any tax-break lovers would like it if President Obama decreed a big tax break for anyone who voted for him. One of their number claimed that it was really a tax penalty, but did not explain further.
A complicated and exploitable tax code will reward people for the wrong sort of skill: skill in exploiting tax-code weaknesses. It thus goes against free-market ideals, no matter how much some pro-capitalist ideologues may deny it.
@slc1 I think you mean “we have a government of the poor, by the rich, and for the rich.”