Apple's $348M Tax Settlement In Italy Bodes Ill For Google, Facebook, Microsoft
It&#x27;s great how we&#x27;re living in a world where tax codes are so idiotic and complex that it takes long lawsuits to figure out what tax is actually due.<p>It&#x27;s not about following the letter of the law; it&#x27;s about following the letter of the law, avoiding the court of public opinion, and coughing up whatever is necessary to stop the complaints when some politician wants to distract people from their incompetence and whip up some good old nationalist fury.<p>What do you legally owe?  It&#x27;s undefined.  Or more, defined by whether the country you are in likes you for PR reasons (Google is stealing our newspaper jobs!) * the skill of your lawyers.  Great!<p>How about, we admit corporate income tax is a stupid idea, get rid of it, and raise capital gains taxes respectively (and dividends)?  People have the great feature of being corporeal beings which live in a country, which makes them much easier to tax than ethereal corporations.<p>Of course there are rough edges to fix around overseas investors, but it could not possibly, in any world, be worse than the system we have today.