Making your corporate bed — and sleeping in it

I’ll admit this might seem old fashioned.

But I actually believe that being part of a community involves more than just absorbing its benefits. (And I mean “community” in a loose sense: I’m including your neighbourhood, town or city, your province, and the country as a whole.)

On the smallest level, that means personal responsibilities of the smallest kind: you don’t shovel or snowblow the snow out of your driveway and in the process, block the public sidewalk. If your garbage can blows over, you pick up the spilled trash, not just say, “It’s not on my property any more, it’s not my problem any more.”

And that actually extends to paying taxes: municipal and provincial taxes are part of that community presence. You don’t have to worry about the cost of going to the hospital, because you’ve been paying for that hospital and staff for years. You pay for roads, for sewer services, for garbage collection — and some people pay more than others, because they are better able to pay.

It’s a function of life: certain services are better and more cheaply provided by a centralized service. You wouldn’t want to have to maintain your own personal fire department, and people who operate their own sewer services — through septic systems — often pine for the simplicity of have municipal sewer service.

Being a part of a collective has a price — and sometimes, it has large benefits.

Right now, one of those benefits is the federal government’s ability to help individuals and businesses that are being hit hard by the public health requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quite simply, because we’re part of that big collective, we have at least a bit of support so that we can self-isolate and protect ourselves and others from the virus. But, for years, there are those who have taken a different view: anxious to keep as much money for themselves as possible, they’ve moved head offices or cash profits to offshore tax havens.

The argument’s been a simple one: “If it’s legal, why shouldn’t we?”

Well, that’s correct — legally, it’s fine to shelter money. But, if you decide to withdraw yourself from your community responsibilities, there comes a point where that community has absolutely no responsibility to you.

I think of it sort of like insurance: companies that have made a conscious decision to not pay for insurance — opting to essentially insure themselves — can’t turn around and say to the insurance industry, “My loss has turned out to be too big, so I need an insurance settlement.” Obviously, it doesn’t work that way.

Tax havens don’t occur accidentally: a company or an individual has to go looking for ways to opt out of their responsibilities to the community that buys their goods and underwrites their profits.

So, companies that aren’t part of the tax payment pool should not expect to benefit from any kind of support from government.

Opt out of the responsibilities, opt out of the benefits.

We should support their employees for certain — employees who, no doubt, are paying their own taxes because they aren’t able to avail of offshore havens. But the companies?

They — and, frankly, their executives and shareholders — made their choice about whether they wanted to be in a community or just in the money. They can now look to the “community” they chose instead for whatever support might be available.

Truth is, that’s little to none.

We are all moving forward by pulling together — you can’t just decide that, now that there’s rough water, you’re going to pick up an oar after all.