Google's Tax Strategy

Steven Pearlstein in today's Washington Post offers an interesting, troubling opinion piece on multinational corporations' tax strategies. He focuses on Google, and the firm's elaborate tax avoidance schemes. Pearlstein's brief descriptions of Google's cagey, international money movements and corporate structures cast light on a corrupt system. As Pearlstein points out, Google's pushing its duty to shareholders as a sort of human shield against criticism is bullshit, plain and simple. He notes that small businesses, who lack the army of fixers to make tax liabilities vanish, tend to pay higher taxes than "do no evil" Google.

Of course, one understands the awkwardness of criticizing a firm that provides the forum for this blog. However, it's in the public interest, and Google's ultimate interest, to pay its fair share for the common good in the United States. That statement should be written, here and elsewhere, and acted upon, without delay.

The photograph shows the Cayman National Bank building in Grand Cayman.