Editor,

I read Mr. Schoening’s letter to the editor regarding Burger King and had a question — “What would you do about it then? Erect a big fence and force the companies to pay the taxes or else?”

The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, by a large margin. No wonder companies are jumping ship wholesale.

What is the goal of a company, to pay taxes or to turn a profit? Any company is well within its rights to do what is in the best interest of the company and its shareholders, not the government’s coffers.

A business exists to make money, as much money as possible. Despite what they will tell you about “providing X service,” or “Helping you by providing X product,” they provide that product and/or service to make money for the company, not the government, not to help you.

We do not live in a communist society where everything is done for what the government decrees best for the people. We live in a Capitalist society in which people are free to build companies and make decisions to keep that company alive and to grow and increase profit margins as they see fit. If that means moving their headquarters to another country to pay less in taxes, then who are you to put them down for that?

I agree that companies need to stay and/or come to the United States. That’s how we can spurn job growth. But how do we do that? Do we use mafia-type thug tactics of making it illegal for them to do anything, in effect extorting and blackmailing the tax money from them? Or do we look at our over 70,000 pages of tax law and make common sense changes to save everybody money and increase  the revenues for the government?

Personally, I vote for the latter.

Patrick Kazmierczak

Oak Harbor