237. Is corporations' decision not to pay taxes a wilful one?

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We know we have a problem with large multinational corporations not paying due taxes if they can by any means avoid it, which they indeed can. This seems immoral. When so many need solidarity, and when such huge profits are made, how can this tax avoidance be justified? But here there is a problem borne of our personalisation bias, the human tendency to personalise in order to relate and understand. Corporations don’t make a wilful or moral decision to put profit over taxes. The effort to minimise or avoid taxes is rather the result of internal incentives, for managers and financiers, which are not considered on morality but on efficacy. They are just the way things are done, the way business and management schools teach us to act. What is missing from corporations (nearly by definition or necessity) is dreamers, visionaries with the capacity to redesign received wisdom at all levels. All we need for corporates to contribute is for their leaders to focus on this, accept its importance 

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Location: Hereford, UK

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