| The same thing is happening in _all_ countries. I'm from Scandinavia, and plenty of large US corporations pay zero taxes because of very complex arrangements. Regular people with smaller companies have to pay high taxes though. It's called soft imperialism. The US / Transnational empire forces all countries to "open their markets", either via direct war, og in allied states, via soft power. Then various firms like McKinsey or Goldman working more or less as extensions of the CIA sets up shops to takeover markets and siphon money from local markets towards a tiny US / Transnational elite. It's a system that promotes "free markets" but is actually just rule by the VHNWI's. In Europe in particular this power grab came especially after the clauses in the Marshal Plan that helped rebuild western europe after WW2, but in effect making them vassal states to the US. So there is no "choice" here, that's why even in the richest northern European states american corporations pay zero taxes. It's not just a US empire problem though - after a certain size companies just become above the law, just as with private equity for individuals, when a company can hire someone like Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers etc. they can essentially just avoid taxes. |
Yes, they ago against the "spirit of the law", but that's pretty much it.
What frustrates me is this feeling I have that tax laws being Byzantine is actually a "feature", not a bug. As in the tax laws were designed this way. Maybe via "soft power" applied on the politicians by "moneyed interests", I don't know.
But clearly, there seems to be much too little action done to put a stop to this given how much noise politicians make about how Google et al. should pay more taxes.
They just come up with absurd schemes which of course won't be implemented, or again, will be but with loopholes such that Mom & Pop's store will have to pay a lot but BigCorp's army of lawyers will be able to dance around them.