Email"Why is it unethical to comply with the law?" ask David Giampaolo and Geoffrey Wood (It's not wrong to avoid tax, 8 December). But using every artificial contrivance that can be dreamed up – making products in a country where it's most efficient then transferring tax on the profits to a shell company in a tax haven, charging high royalty payments to your own subsidiaries for use of your own products because that can be claimed against tax, etc – isn't purely aiming to comply with the law. It's using every convoluted device to get round the obvious intent of the law.
The law is actually part of a moral framework, a mutual compact that binds society to a common purpose accepted as just and balanced. It's not a colander where companies can drain off what suits them (infrastructure and transport use, police protection, etc) while sidestepping their fair contribution. If companies with a turnover in billions don't pay their fair share in tax, is it right that everyone else, including the very poor, has to pay more or put up with service cuts?
Last, Giampaolo and Wood fall back on tax competitiveness, a race to the bottom. The self-defeating absurdity of this is shown by George Osborne's latest ploy, to cut the tax on multinationals that operate a finance company in a tax haven from 23% to just 5%. No wonder the UK-controlled British Virgin Islands has only 30,000 inhabitants but 457,000 shell companies registered there.
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton
• David Giampaolo and Geoffrey Wood deny the legitimacy of moral judgment itself, at least when based on principles that are not "universally agreed". While ethics is not as precise a science as physics or mathematics, nor is it just a matter of personal preferences, like whether one prefers sweet or savoury. Ethics is a matter of informed, careful, rational judgment. And society is best when citizens engage thoughtfully and actively in the moral concerns of the day. This is what happened on Saturday when hundreds engaged in civil disobedience as an expression of their concern over the way Starbucks and others have chosen to arrange their tax affairs.
Presumably Giampaolo and Wood would also like citizens to shut up about equal rights for women and minorities, the harm multinationals cause to the environment, and the effect of transfer pricing on the developing world. There are no "universally agreed moral principles" in these areas, so we might as well sit back and let lobbyists decide government policy. What cynical men they are.
Philip Goff
Department of philosophy, University of Liverpool
• The defence of corporate tax avoidance by Giampaolo and Wood is both intellectually and practically outdated. Like Allister Heath's argument in the same edition (The conversation: Time to pay up, 8 November), it rests on the claim that the business corporation is not an individual, merely an economic intermediary, or "bundle of contracts". Yet in law corporations are distinct legal personalities with similar rights and responsibilities to human subjects. The corporate social responsibility movement has persuaded many corporations that this status requires ethical behaviour like that expected of human citizens. Corporations' consequent assurance that they now operate according to voluntarily adopted codes and standards leaves little wriggle room for them to be moral on some issues and amoral, or immoral, on taxation.
Bryn Jones
Department of social and policy sciences, University of Bath
• We were once told that there was no such thing as society, only individuals. Now, we are told there are no such things as companies, only individuals and contracts. Perhaps the remedy is to abolish limited liability companies and require all new enterprises to be true partnerships, with each partner sharing the cost, risks and profits. This of course would destroy the corporate/managerial culture that has brought companies and the economy to the state they are in.
Gerard McMullan
London
• Gareth Hills, president of the Association of Revenue and Customs, sets out (Letter, 5 December) the ways in which the senior management of HMRC "continue to deliver despite HMRC resource cuts". It didn't appear to have been the case in some of Dave Hartnett's fairly recent dealings with larger companies. Perhaps he wasn't a member of the ARC?
Brian Howes
Bingham, Nottinghamshire
• I am waiting for someone to organise a mass refusal by "small" businesses to pay any tax until there are visible signs that big corporations pay fair rates of tax and do not try to get away with patronising "offers" to pay a little bit.
Ken Baldry
London
• I was planning an ironic letter comparing Starbucks' sales and profits per outlet in the UK and in Luxembourg (Letters, 8 December). Then I discovered there is not a single Starbucks in Luxembourg. The nearest is in 70km away in Germany.
John Banks
Ledbury, Herefordshire
• In boycotting Amazon (Money, 8 December) I innocently placed a DVD order with Sainsbury's Entertainment online, only to find the order acknowledged by Sainsbury's Guernsey PCC Ltd, a subsidiary of Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd. Perhaps all companies should be required to come clean before involving the consumer in tax-avoiding schemes.
Peter Connolly
Nottingham
• I have just sent a Christmas gift to my sister in the UK only to find that it apparently makes her liable to VAT and customs duty. Has Scrooge taken up residence at No 11?
Eric Cochrane
Canberra, Australia
