And many of the "loopholes" are there for the same reason. they're there to encourage some behaviour the government wants to encourage.
you can bet it didn't really shock them one bit and they knew damn well it was going on.
there are countries where their tax authorities don't make it so easy.
ever notice how it's only googles income outside the US which is funneled through ireland? that's because the IRS don't piss around nearly as much as they UK government when it comes to multinationals.
You still don't seem to understand the difference between "evade" and "avoid"
so, the government starts a saving scheme to encourage people to save.
they offer to not charge you tax on the interest on money you save. the rate is a little worse than other saving accounts but you go with that one since without the tax you make a little more interest.
then a few years later some self righteous clown comes along and says to you "very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe" and gives you a bill for 5 years back taxes on the account along with interest and penalties as if they'd never offered the origional deal.
is that remotely fair?
or the government wants to encourage the building of low income housing. so they offer to only charge a lower rate of tax or no tax. you invest your money into building low income houses.
then a few years later some self righteous clown comes along and says to you "very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe" and gives you a bill for 5 years back taxes on the account along with interest and penalties as if they'd never offered the origional deal.
is that remotely fair?
You're morally obliged to pay every penny of tax you owe but not a penny more.
you don't want rule of law, you want an autocracy where even if you follow the law to the letter someone can swoop in and punish you or declare that you owe them money.
or that he's getting something else out of the deal.
perhaps it's stock he can't shift and would have to pay to dump.
perhaps you're a celebrity and he wants it to be seen that you shop there.
perhaps he's just incompetent.
and all 3 situations are common. they want the company in employing people more than they want a cut of their profits, they want some task done, they want prestige or the people writing the laws are just morons.
what you don't seem to be paying attention to is that most of these are signed off on by the local countries tax authorities.
if one of your friends was a good accountant/lawyer who showed you how you could have cut your tax bill to, say 20% you wouldn't have done it?
it's as immoral as buying your grocery shopping for 1 cent when the supermarket offers to sell it to you for 1 cent and the owner of the supermarket has reviewed your shopping and agreed that he's ok with selling it to you for 1 cent.
him offering you an insanely good deal doens't make you an immoral person.
sure. it's as immoral as when you avoid tax yourself.
If you put money into a government saving scheme to encourage saving where the government doesn't charge tax on the interest then you're avoiding tax.
if you're a sole trader and you buy things for the company(expense) when taxes are high rather than leaving it as profit and taking that money out to spend on shoes then you're avoiding tax.
most of the "loopholes" are intentional. they're there to encourage people to put money into things the government wants them to put money into like forrestry or low income housing.
sometimes the government screws up and gives people too good a deal. that's not the fault of the people being given a good deal.
lots of forms of tax avoidance have gone to court and been declared perfectly legal. so no, it's not a matter of "Yet"
If you do your own taxes then whenever you do anything legal to keep your tax bill down then you're avoiding taxes. Ever put your money into a government saving scheme to which DIRT isn't applied? tax avoidance.
and sometimes the lawyers are wrong, they've missed a comma in the law or the judge decides that some interpretation of the law isn't correct.
TFA doesn't mention evasion(not paying the tax you owe and illegal) and it's very different to avoidance which is just using legal means to pay as little tax as you legally can.
you crash into me, I sue you, I say that one of your online profiles has relevant info. they wade through your profile looking for damning evidence and find it "oh man, I was so wasted that night, I'm so glad they didn't breathalyze me after I hit that idiot"
this isn't search and seizure. if you want to bring a case against someone in civil court they have the right to defend themselves and as such the right to gather the information they need to defend themselves. If you're unwilling to be open, honest and cooperative then don't expect anyone else to be open honest and cooperative.
if you're living in a democracy, anyone and everyone who can inform the electorate.
otherwise there is no accountability.
people can't call for enforcement of human rights in a particular case if they don't know they're being violated.
People won't call for legal duties to be created if they don't hear about the events which indicate a need for them.
it doesn't matter if they're all corrupt as long as they're corrupt in different ways with different goals.
If you genuinely think simply not caring about rape, torture or genocide is a good enough reason to get you off the hook (or that there is no hook)for doing nothing to prevent it even when it is within your power to prevent it and that doing noting says nothing about the kind of person you are then we subscribe to different enough worldviews that there's likely little overlap in our moralities.
for reference to some recent news, for example, the idea that carers or staff who knew that saville was raping children yet did nothing, told nobody and let it continue are in no way in the wrong under your moral system.
I completely agree that what manning did was wrong but not totally. his fuckup was leaking everything, including a lot of material he'd never even looked at.
on the other hand had he only leaked a small amount about the worst abuses, limited material he was familiar with without much significant additional info then morally he'd be in the clear.
As you said, responsible disclosure would only likely have ended without it doing anything but get him fired and get his life destroyed professionally
You do realise that your first 2 paragraphs are essentially laying out a very good justification for leaking things anon if you feel you really must right?
"Moral duties don't exist"
So if I see your daughter/sister/son getting raped in a back ally I have no moral duty to call the police or help? you'd have no problem with me as a person if I just laughed and ignored it? you'd go for a beer with me and it wouldn't bother you?
it has little or nothing to do with activism. beyond a certain point it's simply about being a decent human being.
Genocide, rape, torture. you have a moral duty to prevent or disclose some things no matter whether you're a cybersecurity professional or a professional clown and no matter who your employer is.
Working inside any large organisation you tend to get a very distorted view of it's behaviour.
Just for an example: Inside intel do you think they shout "we're breaking the law and practicing unfair trading practices which are going to get us fined heavily"? no. if you talk to an engineer who happens to work on the fab floor he'll probably think it's all just blown out of proportion by a few consumer groups or competitors because it's constantly repeated that the company is good and that it's top priority is to behave in an ethical and etc etc manner, that if you see something you should contact legal (of course so that they can cover their ass, not to actually stop the practice)
you get a much better picture of a lot of large organisation from outside than from inside.
do you really think the military is much different?
right now I know you're just a troll. nice little political bit too.
it's so offensive to compare the army screwing up over a massive fuckup/abuse then shitlisting the guy who tried to follow the proper chain.
he ignores the chain of command and sent letters to every congressman, who with only a few exceptions ignored it too until they couldn't any more.
human rights abuses happen in the army. if you try to follow the proper chain your career is over because you're then known as the guy who fucked over his workmates and CO's.
show me someone in the army who followed the proper procedure over a major human rights abuse who's career didn't end shortly afterwards.
study some history. people who follow the "proper chain" tend to just get ignored and shitlisted. What happened after mai lai? the only reason it saw the light of day was that someone ditched the chain and wrote letters to every senior person he could think of. even then how many people actually went to jail?
when your job is to convey information and you're bad at it because you haven't put in the effort to make your accent intelligable to the people you're talking to then the problem isn't with the people who can't understand you.
failure to communicate well isn't the fault of the people who can't understand you.
good teachers will be replaced the day that someone creates software which can teach a student something, have them explain it back, understand their explanation and the subtle ways in which they are wrong and correct them.
bad teachers on the other hand will be replaced the day that someone videos a teacher scribbling half legible stuff on the board while students try to copy it down.
Slashdot Mirror
And many of the "loopholes" are there for the same reason.
they're there to encourage some behaviour the government wants to encourage.
you can bet it didn't really shock them one bit and they knew damn well it was going on.
there are countries where their tax authorities don't make it so easy.
ever notice how it's only googles income outside the US which is funneled through ireland? that's because the IRS don't piss around nearly as much as they UK government when it comes to multinationals.
You still don't seem to understand the difference between "evade" and "avoid"
so, the government starts a saving scheme to encourage people to save.
they offer to not charge you tax on the interest on money you save. the rate is a little worse than other saving accounts but you go with that one since without the tax you make a little more interest.
then a few years later some self righteous clown comes along and says to you "very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe" and gives you a bill for 5 years back taxes on the account along with interest and penalties as if they'd never offered the origional deal.
is that remotely fair?
or the government wants to encourage the building of low income housing. so they offer to only charge a lower rate of tax or no tax. you invest your money into building low income houses.
then a few years later some self righteous clown comes along and says to you "very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe" and gives you a bill for 5 years back taxes on the account along with interest and penalties as if they'd never offered the origional deal.
is that remotely fair?
You're morally obliged to pay every penny of tax you owe but not a penny more.
you don't want rule of law, you want an autocracy where even if you follow the law to the letter someone can swoop in and punish you or declare that you owe them money.
or that he's getting something else out of the deal.
perhaps it's stock he can't shift and would have to pay to dump.
perhaps you're a celebrity and he wants it to be seen that you shop there.
perhaps he's just incompetent.
and all 3 situations are common. they want the company in employing people more than they want a cut of their profits, they want some task done, they want prestige or the people writing the laws are just morons.
no, TFA seemed focused on trying to demonise the company in question.
the problem isn't that companies take the best deal they can get. the problem is that they get offered deals which are too good by governments.
then change the law.
I'm 100% in favor of making such schemes harder.
what you don't seem to be paying attention to is that most of these are signed off on by the local countries tax authorities.
if one of your friends was a good accountant/lawyer who showed you how you could have cut your tax bill to, say 20% you wouldn't have done it?
it's as immoral as buying your grocery shopping for 1 cent when the supermarket offers to sell it to you for 1 cent and the owner of the supermarket has reviewed your shopping and agreed that he's ok with selling it to you for 1 cent.
him offering you an insanely good deal doens't make you an immoral person.
"I also used to work freelance and yes, deducted reasonable expenses."
So you avoided taxes.
then they need to rewrite their tax law to prevent such things.
that doesn't mean that what's happening now is actually illegal.
sure. it's as immoral as when you avoid tax yourself.
If you put money into a government saving scheme to encourage saving where the government doesn't charge tax on the interest then you're avoiding tax.
if you're a sole trader and you buy things for the company(expense) when taxes are high rather than leaving it as profit and taking that money out to spend on shoes then you're avoiding tax.
most of the "loopholes" are intentional. they're there to encourage people to put money into things the government wants them to put money into like forrestry or low income housing.
sometimes the government screws up and gives people too good a deal. that's not the fault of the people being given a good deal.
lots of forms of tax avoidance have gone to court and been declared perfectly legal. so no, it's not a matter of "Yet"
If you do your own taxes then whenever you do anything legal to keep your tax bill down then you're avoiding taxes.
Ever put your money into a government saving scheme to which DIRT isn't applied? tax avoidance.
and sometimes the lawyers are wrong, they've missed a comma in the law or the judge decides that some interpretation of the law isn't correct.
have they actually been charged with tax evasion?
TFA doesn't mention evasion(not paying the tax you owe and illegal) and it's very different to avoidance which is just using legal means to pay as little tax as you legally can.
if it's very wet and the item is put in fast it still will.
the people bringing the case get the same rights.
you crash into me, I sue you, I say that one of your online profiles has relevant info. they wade through your profile looking for damning evidence and find it "oh man, I was so wasted that night, I'm so glad they didn't breathalyze me after I hit that idiot"
this isn't search and seizure. if you want to bring a case against someone in civil court they have the right to defend themselves and as such the right to gather the information they need to defend themselves. If you're unwilling to be open, honest and cooperative then don't expect anyone else to be open honest and cooperative.
how many knights walked into combat with nothing but armor and a shield?
it never precludes weapons development. anyone who builds a shield keeps their sword.
what did the nobility with armour and shields tranditionally do to the lower classes without armor?
blacksmiths too.
"Leak Anonymously to whom?"
if you're living in a democracy, anyone and everyone who can inform the electorate.
otherwise there is no accountability.
people can't call for enforcement of human rights in a particular case if they don't know they're being violated.
People won't call for legal duties to be created if they don't hear about the events which indicate a need for them.
it doesn't matter if they're all corrupt as long as they're corrupt in different ways with different goals.
If you genuinely think simply not caring about rape, torture or genocide is a good enough reason to get you off the hook (or that there is no hook)for doing nothing to prevent it even when it is within your power to prevent it and that doing noting says nothing about the kind of person you are then we subscribe to different enough worldviews that there's likely little overlap in our moralities.
for reference to some recent news, for example, the idea that carers or staff who knew that saville was raping children yet did nothing, told nobody and let it continue are in no way in the wrong under your moral system.
I completely agree that what manning did was wrong but not totally. his fuckup was leaking everything, including a lot of material he'd never even looked at.
on the other hand had he only leaked a small amount about the worst abuses, limited material he was familiar with without much significant additional info then morally he'd be in the clear.
As you said, responsible disclosure would only likely have ended without it doing anything but get him fired and get his life destroyed professionally
You do realise that your first 2 paragraphs are essentially laying out a very good justification for leaking things anon if you feel you really must right?
"Moral duties don't exist"
So if I see your daughter/sister/son getting raped in a back ally I have no moral duty to call the police or help? you'd have no problem with me as a person if I just laughed and ignored it? you'd go for a beer with me and it wouldn't bother you?
sounds about right. though pretty much any big organisation will be the same.
it has little or nothing to do with activism. beyond a certain point it's simply about being a decent human being.
Genocide, rape, torture. you have a moral duty to prevent or disclose some things no matter whether you're a cybersecurity professional or a professional clown and no matter who your employer is.
Working inside any large organisation you tend to get a very distorted view of it's behaviour.
Just for an example:
Inside intel do you think they shout "we're breaking the law and practicing unfair trading practices which are going to get us fined heavily"?
no. if you talk to an engineer who happens to work on the fab floor he'll probably think it's all just blown out of proportion by a few consumer groups or competitors because it's constantly repeated that the company is good and that it's top priority is to behave in an ethical and etc etc manner, that if you see something you should contact legal (of course so that they can cover their ass, not to actually stop the practice)
you get a much better picture of a lot of large organisation from outside than from inside.
do you really think the military is much different?
"[citation needed]"
right now I know you're just a troll.
nice little political bit too.
it's so offensive to compare the army screwing up over a massive fuckup/abuse then shitlisting the guy who tried to follow the proper chain.
he ignores the chain of command and sent letters to every congressman, who with only a few exceptions ignored it too until they couldn't any more.
human rights abuses happen in the army. if you try to follow the proper chain your career is over because you're then known as the guy who fucked over his workmates and CO's.
show me someone in the army who followed the proper procedure over a major human rights abuse who's career didn't end shortly afterwards.
study some history. people who follow the "proper chain" tend to just get ignored and shitlisted. What happened after mai lai? the only reason it saw the light of day was that someone ditched the chain and wrote letters to every senior person he could think of. even then how many people actually went to jail?
They know that microsoft know how important gaming is long term.
they also know how much more leverage they have if they ever need to negotiate with microsoft if there's alternative systems.
when your job is to convey information and you're bad at it because you haven't put in the effort to make your accent intelligable to the people you're talking to then the problem isn't with the people who can't understand you.
failure to communicate well isn't the fault of the people who can't understand you.
good teachers will be replaced the day that someone creates software which can teach a student something, have them explain it back, understand their explanation and the subtle ways in which they are wrong and correct them.
bad teachers on the other hand will be replaced the day that someone videos a teacher scribbling half legible stuff on the board while students try to copy it down.
I find .NET to be quite nice really. the pain comes when you mix in older things like VB6 and try to get them to talk to each other.
On that note after working with VB6. sometimes. sometimes it's not just bias. some languages are just awful and make it hard to write good code.
languages are not all equal. some make it hard to spot bugs while others make it easy.
bad languages respond to a typo by working subtly incorrectly. good languages respond to a typo by refusing to work.