Google proudly announced it's launching a special search engine to help veterans find jobs. That's a nice way to support returning servicemen. It's also a sop. The real way Google should help veterans is to pay its damned taxes.

"We're happy to contribute to this important initiative and hope businesses use this opportunity to connect with veterans seeking employment," Google wrote in announcing the new search, which will live on the new National Resource Directory website, a veteran job bank created by the Obama administration.

While it's working with Google through one department, the executive branch is cracking down though another: The Internal Revenue Service is auditing Google's international scheme to minimize its taxes, estimated by Bloomberg News to save the company around $1 billion per year.

Google shifts its intellectual property to offshore units, then licenses it back from within the U.S., effectively moving profits to low tax havens abroad. "The agency is bringing more than typical scrutiny to how the company valued software rights and other intellectual property it licensed," a source tells Bloomberg.

Google should have known better; GlaxoSmithKline Plc paid $3.4 billion to settle an investigation into a similar scheme several years ago. But, hey, GlaxoSmithKline probably didn't set up a nifty little search engines to help veterans comb desperately through job listings that are bereft of teacher, firefighter and infrastructure jobs because Congress would rather spend money on corporate tax breaks for Google and other hugely profitable companies than spend money on the president's jobs plan for ordinary people. At least Google gestures toward being a non evil corporation.

[Photo of Google's Washington, DC offices via Getty]