Ethics of tax planning

[DGuller]

No one has a moral obligation to drive slower than the speed limit demands, nor to pay more taxes than are required.

You don't have a moral obligation to not put other people in danger?

Thanks.  I needed an example of a non sequitur for my students, and this is a textbook example of one.

Something tells me that your students have already been lectured on hundreds of examples of non sequiturs.

[crazy canuck]

I think that is too simplistic.  Tax compliance is largely voluntary for most people.  Coercive reasons are not a particularly big motivator for most people.  That changes substantially which we get into the area of corporate tax structures.  In that area it is very much the way you have described it.

That is why I've focused on corporate tax. However, coercive reasons are I still think a major motivator on personal returns. I suspect the tax compliance for bartenders, waiters, and waitresses is extremely low, while probably quite high for salaried people in a corporation. If employers were not mandated to report salary information and withhold taxes, I bet compliance would plummet.

Perhaps a difference between our countries.  Employers here do not report salary information but instead issue statements which the employee provides to the tax authority.  Auditing of salaried and hourly wage earners is very rare.  Voluntary compliance among that group of tax payers is very high.

[Razgovory]

No one has a moral obligation to drive slower than the speed limit demands, nor to pay more taxes than are required.

You don't have a moral obligation to not put other people in danger?

Thanks.  I needed an example of a non sequitur for my students, and this is a textbook example of one.

Something tells me that your students have already been lectured on hundreds of examples of non sequiturs.

I have always felt sorry for those poor kids

[alfred russel]

Is it ethical to use a loophole, that you know shouldn't have been there, to avoid military draft during a major war?

Assuming the war is just and necessary, no.

So substitute life for property, and how is this different to tax obligations?

Because there is a long standing historical ethic of "doing one's duty" in fighting evil, being patriotic, etc. when Nazis are at the gates.

I'm not aware of a similar ethic to not take advantage of accelerated depreciation on an SUV, or to have an effective tax rate of 25% when the tax code makes it possible to legally have a tax rate of 22%. You simply need to pay what you owe, and what you owe is defined by statute.

[DGuller]

No one has a moral obligation to drive slower than the speed limit demands, nor to pay more taxes than are required.

You don't have a moral obligation to not put other people in danger?

Thanks.  I needed an example of a non sequitur for my students, and this is a textbook example of one.

Something tells me that your students have already been lectured on hundreds of examples of non sequiturs.

I have always felt sorry for those poor kids

Let's pretend I have some reply to this, to make it easier for grumbler to respond.

[Eddie Teach]

He is molding Young Minds. Like Larry King and Wilford Brimley.

[Martinus]

Is it ethical to use a loophole, that you know shouldn't have been there, to avoid military draft during a major war?

What does it mean "you know shouldn't have been there"? How do you know these things?

[DGuller]

Is it ethical to use a loophole, that you know shouldn't have been there, to avoid military draft during a major war?

What does it mean "you know shouldn't have been there"? How do you know these things?

You often can know if you have common sense and don't have an overriding desire to not know such things.

[Martinus]

Is it ethical to use a loophole, that you know shouldn't have been there, to avoid military draft during a major war?

Assuming the war is just and necessary, no.

So substitute life for property, and how is this different to tax obligations?

Newsflash: our morality frequently differentiates between the treatment of human life and property. 

For example, if I create human life (by having a child), I cannot then destroy it or turn it into something else. I can do it with things I create.

[DGuller]

Ultimately, I think the reason people think it's okay to get one over the IRS is the same reason people think it's okay to get one over an insurance company.  You're not "creatively interpreting the rules" to cheat a fellow human being, you're cheating a faceless organization.  Except you really are cheating other regular people, just not in an obvious way; the feedback that causes the other people to finance your creative interpretation has just enough intermediate steps to keep your conscience at bay (if you have any).

[grumbler]

Ultimately, I think the reason people think it's okay to get one over the IRS is the same reason people think it's okay to get one over an insurance company.  You're not "creatively interpreting the rules" to cheat a fellow human being, you're cheating a faceless organization.  Except you really are cheating other regular people, just not in an obvious way; the feedback that causes the other people to finance your creative interpretation has just enough intermediate steps to keep your conscience at bay (if you have any).

Ultimately, I think that you are being ridiculous in arguing that taking advantage of all legal means to reduce taxes is thinking that "it's okay to get one over the IRS."   

Ultimately, I think the reason people think the way you do is because they want, desperately, to feel morally superior to other people, and have no objective basis for doing so.*








* (This is, of course, just a spoof of your ridiculous argument.)

[Razgovory]

Whether trump acted ethical sort of misses the point here.  Trump proposes an enormous tax cut for the rich in order to create new jobs.  Since "smart" businessmen like Trump don't pay taxes, to begin with, what's the point of a tax cut?

[garbon]

Whether trump acted ethical sort of misses the point here.  Trump proposes an enormous tax cut for the rich in order to create new jobs.  Since "smart" businessmen like Trump don't pay taxes, to begin with, what's the point of a tax cut?

[crazy canuck]

Ultimately, I think the reason people think the way you do is because they want, desperately, to feel morally superior to other people, and have no objective basis for doing so.*

I often wonder if this is Grumbler's true self and he hides it (I hope) in the classroom or if he has just been trolling us all these years - as I assume Marti has been doing.

[Berkut]

What if I just want to kind of casually feel morally superior, but am not particularly desperate about it? How would one discern the difference there?

Or what if I am desperate to feel morally equivalent?