ttp://www.accountingweb.com/article/maximizing-returns-or-unethical-tax-avoidance/222083

This is a post that reflects on Jacqline Geng’s blog post about Apple’s unethical conduct about avoiding taxation regulations, to see the original article,  click here

Apple, a company that owns more than a hundred billion dollars and is well-known either in the U.S domestic market or the globe, is avoiding its obligation of paying the income corporate tax by taking advantage of the law loopholes of the tax regulations of Ireland and America- creating a stateless corporation. Technically, Apple still legally operates its company without either violating the United States’ tax corporation law or that of Ireland’s (utilizing the notorious law loopholes called Double Irish). However, as Apple exempt itself from the responsibility, it is operating against business conscience and ethics,which can create  negative impacts on its brand name and reputation.

I agree with Jacquline’s opinion on Apple’s unethical conduct of deliberately avoiding corporation tax. The influence and power Apple has in the competitive market of electronics product industry, United States, and even the globe is enormous, therefore Apple not only has to abide by all the regulations but also keep away from the deeds that would give the public negative impressions and pose damage to the brand’s image. However, the article did not highlight the problems of “Double Irish” (a deception strategy), and other tax loopholes  used widely among American enterprises, which indicates that there is an underlying concern that in the future, more companies will utilize this well-knowing, long-existing tax heaven strategy to avoid its social obligation. Therefore, the government ought to devise a better, more complete regulation to fix the failing taxation codes to stop companies from dodging its social responsibility and placing its interest before the social interest before the wellbeing of the society.

Below is the diagram which shows the tax payment that Apple has “reduced” by exploiting the Double Irish loophole strategy.

Works Citied:

Lee Sheppard “How Does Apple Avoid Taxes?”  5/28/2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2013/05/28/how-does-apple-avoid-taxes/

the original article: http://www.scu.edu/r/ethics-center/ethicsblog/business-ethics-news/17664/TWITTER-IPO:-Where-are-the-Women?

This article, which highlights Twitter’s, or most high-tech companies’ preferences of male over female due to the stereotype and the tradition. Basically, the article addresses the reasons for not having an equal number of female and male workers in Twitter’s executive team; however, I do not agree with the expert’s stand that it is a long-term problem and cannot be fixed in a short amount of time, and also the perspective which attributes Twitter’s difficulty of finding a woman member in their team to the industry’s tradition and stereotypes.

If certain actions or regulations were made by the government, the high-tech industry companies such as twitter will put more efforts into finding excellent women members for their executive team instead of doing it reluctantly and shows the society “how hard it is to find a woman worker in the high-tech industry”. For instance,  government can offer sponsorship to  twitter if the company agrees to hire the same number of female and male members on its executive team, or even encouraging them to form an all-female team. This way, not only the big companies like twitter will be willing to break the tradition because of the sponsor and the extra promotion, but also the reputation they will earn from lessen a long-existed social problem- gender inequality. After all, twitter is one big target for the social activists because of its fame and the extreme lack of woman(only having one woman) on its team, but there are certainly more companies in this industry that have the gender imbalance issue when hiring.

Works Cited:

Patrick, Coutermarsh(2013). TWITTER IPO: Where are the Women? from http://www.scu.edu/r/ethics-center/ethicsblog/business-ethics-news/17664/TWITTER-IPO:-Where-are-the-Women?

http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/early-twitter-team-member-dishes-on-services-origins/d/d-id/1105151?
Bronwen, Clune(2013). There’s absolutely no excuse for Twitter not to have a woman on its board?  from  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/11/twitter-ipo-women-board

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog! My name is Richard Wong, but I had to use Woong as my last name for the blog because someone has already took this name. I am from Richmond, a suburb area which is about an hour away from Vancouver, and I came to Canada three years ago from Taiwan. This is my first time to create my own blog for the course, and it is also the first time I need to learn how to combine the computer technology with my business knowledge, but I am enthusiastic and passionate about acquiring business skills and operations, therefore I am very excited about the course!