The Relationship Of Tax Avoidance With Corporate Social Responsibility

Tax avoidance has become a massive topic of discussion over the past few years, given the current global economic conditions and the cuts to the public sector by the government as a result. This led to increased anger from the public who perceive avoidance by many of the country’s wealthiest people in a time of austerity as greed. Perhaps the most notable demonstration of this anger can be seen in the actions of the group UK Uncut, who for the past year have been organising protests at shops owned by retail tycoon Philip Green who, as the poster boy for tax avoidance, paid a £1.2 billion dividend to his Monaco-resident wife.

interest in the company. On the one hand, they can enjoy tax efficiency by paying tax of

period to complete each in-class quiz. Each quiz will be graded based on 50 points.

The ethical issues presented in this case are the different views that each individual has on how the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This dispute is between Mr. Milton Friedman, John Mackey, and T.J. Rodgers; all of which has a different outlook on CSR. The definition of CSR refers to the responsibilities that business has to the society in which it operates and to those actions that a business can be held accountable. Most philosophers have come up with three different types of responsibilities that corporations can be held accountable for. The first and most important of the three is a corporation’s duty to not cause harm. If a corporation can

The main objective of many companies is to minimize their tax obligations. Jeffers (2014) discussed the reason of why companies adopt tax inversion strategies. The researcher indicated that the income maximization is a major reason of companies attempting to reduce their tax liability (pp. 100-101). Tax inversion strategies provide companies an advantage to lower income tax rate. Today, U.S. corporations renounce its U.S. citizenship and move to low-tax countries. Companies that reincorporate oversees are not obligated to pay U.S. taxes on earning income (p. 99). Many countries implement tax competition strategies to attract and retain businesses. Well-known companies, such as Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Tyco, General Electric, PepsiCo, etc. take benefits of tax shelter opportunities overseas (p. 102). Other benefits of the jurisdiction abroad are flexible banking laws and simplified litigation processes.

1. Ethical Obligations and Decision in Accounting Shawn M. Mintz and Roselyn E. Morris page 248

Even with all these reasons on why corporate tax evasions are bad, there are still some arguments saying that the current tax system is fine as it is. These arguments usually derive from the fear of change. People are scared of the actions that these companies will take in order to counter act the new law set by the government.

The second step under Trevino and Nelson is to define the ethical issues. In this case, the American manager felt that it was dishonest to underreport earnings on the tax form. The manager also identified the payment of bustarella, which was viewed almost as a corrupt practice. These issues were ethical to the American manager, who assumed that because the process was different and less transparent than the American tax system that it lacked ethical integrity. To the Italians, however, neither practice is considered to be unethical, and should not have been an ethical dilemma for the manager. The manager was caught feeling that there was an ethical dilemma because such practices conflicted with his

It is imperative for tax professionals to understand the ethics environment of the practice. This paper is focused on the ethical responsibilities of tax professionals.

The study is important because it examines the role of ethics in accounting. The research on identified problems is necessary due to vagueness of ethics concepts and its difficulty to

Fudging records and misstating corporate revenue to management, shareholder, and the IRS is unlawful activity. Therefore, Alex in this case scenario must abide by the law and take the right action that is in accordance to the law. The ethical implications of this case the consequences of doing what it right to those who are involved in the scenario. This paper is going to analyze the theories of virtue ethicist, act utilitarianism, and Kant’s duty ethicists based on the given scenario for this case, and assume what a person representing these theories would recommend Alex as the right thing to do. Also inspect their justification process including some of the strength and weakness of each philosophical view. In addition, clarify my

Through this survey, they hoped to “rank the main arguments that have been used to justify tax evasion on ethical grounds over the last 500 years” meaning that they hoped to find which arguments carried to the most influence to prove that in that instance it is ethical (pg. 1). While collecting data to ultimately rank these arguments, Nickerson et al. (2009) clumped data together in accordance to the country of the participants. They took the mean scores from the survey, based on a scale of 1 being always ethical and 7 being never ethical, and compared them based on country. They found that the United Kingdom has the lowest mean average from the survey at 4.15, suggesting a low resistance to tax evasion, while United States participants average a 5.62, suggesting a high tax compliance. These findings are a result of a combination of the community perceptions, the countries tax penalties, and the perceptions of the government. This proves that all three factors that lead to poor ethics in an individual play an extremely large role in whether or not an individual will commit tax evasion. If economic reasons where the root of whether or not an individual would commit tax evasion or not, then the graph would be arranged differently and have different mean averages that only correlated to the risk of

Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician and writer, who had a massive impact on the research agenda of the economics profession. His famous words “the only responsibility of business is to increase its profits” (Friedman, Milton. 1970) led to many controversial debates on whether businesses should have ethics or if profit should be their main goal. Corporate social responsibility has many definitions, as its interpretation is quite loose, so I have chosen one that relates the most to this essay, given by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, in 2000: “Corporate social

The importance of the revenue to a country is well known in the world. The global financial system has more interconnections now than at any other time in history. (Simser.J, 2008, p.131). Tax evasion is one of most common crimes that damage the order of revenue. This is closely affecting the market economy and daily lives. Normally, most commentators consider tax evasion profoundly unethical. There are some ambiguities regarding the meaning of the very word “taxation” that must be addressed. It is maintained that the meaning of taxation depends neither on the agents who collect it, nor on their objectives. (Bagus, Block, Eabrasu,

The actions of multinational corporations (MNCs), which derive from their morally dubious goals, may be completely legitimate within a capitalist society. One of these actions that will be examined in this essay is the use of tax havens, as a way of avoiding higher tax liability. This paper will utilise the case study of Apple’s tax avoidance, in examining the legitimation of a company’s goal of profit maximisation, a goal that is against the moral/social consensus