It's not fundamentally immoral; it's more of a tragedy of the commons.
All these loopholes are perfectly legal and companies actually need to exploit them to remain competitive.If they didn't then any competitor could decide to do this and could earn 30% less and still make a bigger profit.
It would of course have been great if the representatives had been self-aware enough to agree that they might not be taxed effectively in a global market and that they would be willing to co-operate with aligning global tax incentives in a way that leaves it a level playing field for all competitors; but that's probably a bit much to ask ;)
It's better to treat matters of law as orthogonal to matters of morality, since the latter depends very much on the subjective judgment of the observer.
Example: A company, acting "morally" as you define, pays more tax than it is required to under the law. In so doing, it incurs a loss so severe that it must cut staff in order to remain viable. Among those employees cut are some of the more vulnerable - those with low savings, poor health, or babies on the way.
Has the company acted morally?
Consider another issue: Should the same company pay more than its legal obligations in every jurisdiction to which it is subject? How should it allocate its extra giving? What if, in some of those jurisdictions, there's a good chance the extra money will simply go into private pockets via graft and corruption, instead of serving the public good? (There are such jurisdictions in the EU, yes?)
These issues are not as clear-cut as you suggest. It's far better for the tax law to best reflect the morality of the citizenry, and then fully excuse the citizenry (including business entities) from seeking to legally minimize those taxes.
That's disingenuous. You make it sound like your imaginary company goes to extra length to "pay more tax than is required under the law" while it's the complete opposite: these companies go the extra mile to game the system and pay a minimal amount of tax by exploiting failures in the system. There is no "extra giving" to consider, they should just be paying the same taxes other companies are paying.
> A company, acting "morally" as you define, pays more tax than it is required to under the law. In so doing, it incurs a loss so severe that it must cut staff in order to remain viable.
Usually not an issue in this case, since corporation tax covers profits. If anything, corporation taxes encourage greater employment.
At least in Google's and Amazon's case, I'm sure you can add an additional 10% tax on profits without making a dent on the company's competitiveness. They are both extremely profitable businesses, in dominant market positions.
Amazon seems to choose to be unprofitable so they can keep up their revenue growth. If they cut the unprofitable new sectors, they would b profitable, but why bother? Wall Sreeet doesn't care.
All these loopholes are perfectly legal and companies actually need to exploit them to remain competitive.If they didn't then any competitor could decide to do this and could earn 30% less and still make a bigger profit.
It would of course have been great if the representatives had been self-aware enough to agree that they might not be taxed effectively in a global market and that they would be willing to co-operate with aligning global tax incentives in a way that leaves it a level playing field for all competitors; but that's probably a bit much to ask ;)