A number of people on my facebook stream have been posting and commenting on the ruckus over Apples tax avoidance, especially as it relates to iTunes, which even a Luxembourg Government official has jumped in to defend the iTunes tax evasion scheme. The other thread that has been running is commentry on the so called “Buffet Rule”, a proposed tax code change to force millionaires and up, to pay a tax rate that is  comparable to the average middle income family, or some such.

I think this is all losing perspective though, although both cases are dissimilar in practice, at their core, the complaints are about the same thing. While Apple is a worldwide corporation, with many share holders, to whom it owes a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit, how it does it is the same as Buffett.

Changes in laws, it shouldn’t be needed. The billionaires and big companies are master of their own empires, they are not beholden to their accountants and tax advisors. They should move their investments on shore, make sure they are paying a fair wage to all their employees, provide decent health care etc. thats all everone else expects of them. Forcing the goverment to try to inact a law/rule change that is divisive purely because of the polarizing because of what it is trying to do, is just BS. when said billionaires and companies should know that they’d never had made their money in the first place in a weak, unhealthy country that was racked with division, decaying infrastructure, pollution, poorly educated children. JUST PAY YOUR TAXES, don’t avoid them.

Companies recently have spent a lot of time and effort dressing up their annual reports to show their environment and ethical efforts, it is time they did the same for fiscal fairness.