We should never encourage ignoring certain laws or it undermines the whole system. It’s why I don’t support states legalizing weed under the federal government’s nose/while they turn a blind eye. Sure, we like it for weed, but what happens when a super conservative state does something less popular like, say, functionally bans gay marriage and goes, “well you aren’t enforcing drug laws, why should they get a pass but not us?”
I’m sure there are better examples but hopefully I’m getting my point across. Exceptions = weakening of the established structure. I don’t know about you, but I like that “the law is king” in the US. Mostly because we can change them.
Yes, indeed. It completely defeats the purpose of the law, which is why the suggestion is akin to your A solution (that it should be invalidated/removed).
The law doesn't encode "purpose" or "spirit", the law only exists as written. When applying the law, and tax law especially, it's counterproductive to speculate as to "spirit" or "purpose", and best to focus just on what the law actually is, because that's the only part that really counts as "democratic". Intentions and ideals weren't voted on, the actual literal text of the law was.
Or like abortion. The new abortion rules in conservative states are betting they can sway the federal gov if a lawsuit arises, but its based on the assumption they'll get to ignore the gov.
That happened in North Carolina (albeit before weed legalization had gained momentum):
There's no such thing as the "spirit of the law", just like there's no such thing as the "spirit of the code".
If you leave a buffer overflow it will get exploited no matter what. Same thing with the law.
Courts can interpret laws if the interpretation is the problem. If there is just a stupid loophole, then either the law itself makes no sense (as seems to apply to this Jones Act) or it needs to be reworded to align with its intent.
This reminds me of all the california electricity deregulation games where Enron et al moved power out of state and back, or had plants go down strategically for maintenance in order to gain the system. The correct solution is not to say "play nice, you know what we meant". It's to have a consistent and enforceable set of rules that dont admit gaming.
Tax is one of the few areas of law where activities can be declared illegal and subject to punitive sanction after the fact. For example, the fictive loss tax shelter scheme that was popular 15 years ago. Fictive losses were technically legal at the time the scheme began (in the sense that they were legal within the letter of the law but violated the intent of the law), and weren't explicitly stated to be illegal until years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkens_%26_Gilchrist).
