Right. So what happens if a company decides to protest and not pay taxes? Government is going to make its life very difficult, to say the least. How is this a company's fault if a gang of bandits steal money from it to finance nasty things?
It's like saying "Let's not go to this bar anymore, because mafia comes in every now and then and confiscates profit from the owner". Owner is not responsible and the mafia is going to invade every bar you switch to, because it follows the money.
Tax evasion isn't a good way to protest. If it were, you'd see a lot of people jumping on that bandwagon, just so they could have more money at the end of the year! Imagine that being pitched on a shareholder's meeting. "This fiscal year... we are going to protest our taxes. We project a 30% increase in profits."
It's not a good way to protest and people don't jump on that bandwagon simply because government is gonna make their lives very very unpleasant. That's why I say that I wouldn't advocate it - it is immoral to demand from people that they complicate their lives by engaging into a fight with IRS or whatever your tax agency is in your country. But essentially, taxes are forced payments. If it wasn't so, I guarantee you, 90% (if not more) would stop paying.
Totally. There are a lot of reasons to boycott a few of those companies. The tail end of your comment reminds me an animal related reason to boycott BP.
If less tax is raised in UK, do you think that's actually going to stop things like this happening? Of course not, it's just going to make life slightly shittier for British people. The way to fix this is to make it a big enough political issue in the UK that the government backs off.
