>> It just feels like people are being obtuse at this point :S
Maybe -- just maybe -- people understand your point but are bringing up something else that they think is relevant.
> Yet you still doesn't give a straight answer how it is fair that Saleforce pays less tax than Square. I don't blame you. Nobody has answered that question.
I don't think people are saying that the tax situation is fair. Rather, I believe the claim is that Square's CEO is likely not exclusively focused on the unfairness of the situation when he is complaining about the tax situation, but complains about tax in general. I think abalone wouldn't be giving Jack grief (or at least much less), if Jack did not lobby for that tax earlier.
To spell this out further with an extreme example, imagine a recent college grad who's super smart and has the attention of the world. He says "It's crazy that recent college grads are saddled with student loans. Instead, we should soak the rich and heavily tax everyone making $1 million or more." People agree, and the tax is instituted. A few years pass, and after his college debt is forgiven, this recent college grad is doing really well and finds himself making $2 million a year. At this point, he says "It's crazy that higher income workers pay such a high percentage of their income relative to others -- everyone should pay the same percentage." To which people respond "but then we can't forgive student debt with the reduced tax revenue," and yet the recent college grad persists. Do you see the problem with the behavior of the recent college grad?
It might be that the grad sincerely held his conflicting positions when he proclaimed them, but it's also possible that he was always advocating for what was advantageous to himself. Given the short time period (and that the grad makes no offer of accepting his college debt back), people generally guess that he using a sense of fairness to advance his own interests.
Again, I'm not very familiar with the situation, but it seems that the current tax is not a good one, and the CEO of a payments company could have foreseen that it would not be good for his company once his sales got rolling. Why didn't Jack advocate for some other tax scheme earlier, such as one that is based on net income?