Criminal trials carefully lay out how the state believes the actions of the accused meet each required element of the crime. They don’t get to say “Foo definitely killed Bar. The law intends for people to not kill each other, and Foo meant to, therefore Foo is guilty of 1st degree murder.” Rather, they have to prove Foo’s actions met all required elements of the charge.
If you rear-end me while I’m stopped at a light, your intent doesn’t matter, only your actions. If you fail to stop for a school bus displaying red stop lights, your intent doesn’t matter.
I think the IRS step doctrine is relatively rare in legal interpretations, but at a minimum, it’s not “every other law is interpreted that way”.
I don’t take a position on Microsoft’s actions here, other than “if it can be shown to be plainly compliant with the law as written, I’m uncomfortable with the law being changed during interpretation such that it’s deemed to be non-compliant.”
In both cases it is up to the judiciary to make the trade-off/judgement.
You know things are nuts when one corporate accountant gets his own wiki article
I'd love to see the government of Bermuda nationalize that piece of intellectial property and claim all of Google's global income. They've made such a careful, vigorous legal argument that it's responsible for 100% of their revenue, surely they would acknowledge the things they've been claiming for years and continue to pay 100% of their profits to Bermuda.
And, more importantly, nationalize it while compensating the owner for it's declared value, which was zero (or near to).
If the government says it is a fiction, it is a fiction.
