<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>maxhallinan</author><text>I agree that companies are incentivized to pay the least amount of taxes just as they are incentivized to optimize their operating costs in general. I don&amp;#x27;t think that this letter denies that Apple has a rational reason for avoiding taxes. And I agree that this problem is best fixed by making tax avoidance structurally impossible. Pressuring market actors to voluntarily take actions they are not incentivized to take is not a reliable solution.&lt;p&gt;But, Tim Cook himself has framed Apple&amp;#x27;s tax practices in moral&amp;#x2F;ethical terms. In doing so, Tim Cook began a discussion about the moral&amp;#x2F;ethical quality of Apple&amp;#x27;s tax practices. This letter takes part in that conversation. The letter contributes to that conversation by making the very valid point that the moral quality of Apple&amp;#x27;s tax practices is very poor, according to Tim Cook&amp;#x27;s own standards. Regardless of the right solution to the problem, this was something that needed to be stated publicly and was stated well in this letter.</text><parent_chain><item><author>wjnc</author><text>Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter.&lt;p&gt;I think you misunderstand how business works.&lt;p&gt;Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary.&lt;p&gt;Avoidance of taxes is not illegal. We even enlist the help of tax offices in many countries, like the Netherlands, Ireland and perhaps some countries internationally deemed &amp;#x27;tax havens&amp;#x27;. We pay what through mutual understanding with tax offices worldwide is necessary.&lt;p&gt;If you conclude that you find tax evasion a problem, this would be a political problem, not one of enterprise. No enterprise would knowingly pay to much and no construct of &amp;#x27;corporate social responsibility&amp;#x27; could make paying too much alright. We should seek to minimize cost, and we do.&lt;p&gt;Governments should fix tax evasion, not corporations. It&amp;#x27;s not my role to point out the obvious, but if you find the VAT customers pay on our products insufficient and were hoping on a larger slice of our &amp;#x27;foreign income&amp;#x27;: fix your tax code.&lt;p&gt;Kind regards,
TC ;)</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook</title><url>https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/dear-tim-cook-e322998/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>Dear Tim,&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t understand how shares work. Shareholders can only benefit from shares in two ways: through speculation about the share price or through dividends. I&amp;#x27;m kind of disappointed that I&amp;#x27;d have to explain to a man of your stature that money that Apple parks abroad will not benefit the shareholders except in the most indirect ways.&lt;p&gt;If Apple brought home their overseas funds then it would benefit the US and Apple shareholders in general in two ways:&lt;p&gt;The taxes paid would go towards infrastructure, education, health care and other items that benefit all people in our society, and by extension also to us shareholders.&lt;p&gt;Money left over could be used to pay dividends to shareholders or to do tech acquisitions or long term investments in Apple projects which would benefit the shareholders in a more direct fashion.&lt;p&gt;Having money parked abroad waiting for a tax amnesty that may never happen does not have these positive effects and essentially ties up a lot of Apple capital in ways that are not beneficial to anybody except for the banks that get to lend this money out at prime rates while not paying Apple much of anything.&lt;p&gt;best regards</text><parent_chain><item><author>wjnc</author><text>Dear Herr Krach, thank you for your letter.&lt;p&gt;I think you misunderstand how business works.&lt;p&gt;Apple is a profit seeking corporation. Profits we make, we hope to distribute to our shareholders. Paying taxes is an obligation with which we comply, both to the letter and in spirit. We meet such obligations, but not nilly-willy. Our shareholders would not look kindly upon executives who pay more taxes than necessary.&lt;p&gt;Avoidance of taxes is not illegal. We even enlist the help of tax offices in many countries, like the Netherlands, Ireland and perhaps some countries internationally deemed &amp;#x27;tax havens&amp;#x27;. We pay what through mutual understanding with tax offices worldwide is necessary.&lt;p&gt;If you conclude that you find tax evasion a problem, this would be a political problem, not one of enterprise. No enterprise would knowingly pay to much and no construct of &amp;#x27;corporate social responsibility&amp;#x27; could make paying too much alright. We should seek to minimize cost, and we do.&lt;p&gt;Governments should fix tax evasion, not corporations. It&amp;#x27;s not my role to point out the obvious, but if you find the VAT customers pay on our products insufficient and were hoping on a larger slice of our &amp;#x27;foreign income&amp;#x27;: fix your tax code.&lt;p&gt;Kind regards,
TC ;)</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook</title><url>https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/dear-tim-cook-e322998/</url></story>