[MaxHoppersGhost]

> one would have to be rather daft to assume that a country with such absurdly high taxation did not have tax evasion as a key pastime - although probably not as aggressively as in places like the US

The US has lower taxes so by your logic we would have less evasion. Unless you’re making a judgement on Americans.

[arghwhat]

I am making a judgement on the US corporate culture and population within it, yes. It has far more loopholes that remain open and actively used than Denmark does.

Denmark does its very best to make it either a pain in the arse or impossible to use company property in any way that could be seen as having private value. Did you drive home in your company car? Then get ready to be privately taxed of its full market value and for the company to get a bill for the VAT. Did you take a private phone call on a company phone? Then you have to pay the "free phone" tax and the company VAT of the phone. Did you buy furniture for your home office, but without having the home office locked to physically separate it from your regular home, or did you put a comfortable chair in there so it its private value becomes ambiguous? Not a valid company purchase.

Weird US tricks like getting paid in stock and taking loans with that stock as collateral, with the resulting liability cancelling out remaining tax also don't work there. The common stuff would be, say, restaurant owners inexplicably having really low private food expenditure, or really low revenue on paper for how popular the place is.

I suspect the reason is that the US government has pressure from lobbyists to maintain the status quo, while the DK government has pressure to claw in taxes to cover their sky high spending ambitions.

[murderfs]

> Weird US tricks like getting paid in stock and taking loans with that stock as collateral, with the resulting liability cancelling out remaining tax also don't work there.

That's not how the U.S. trick works, it's taking loans with the stock as collateral in order to defer realizing the capital gains while still being able to spend the money. It's no different from just taking out an unsecured loan, it's just that banks are more willing to give you a larger balance/less usurious rates if it's secured by something.

[scandox]

I think the common perception is that Americans are more ideologically committed to tax avoidance whereas Europeans are more viscerally tempted by tax evasion?

[StefanBatory]

Not being an American I've always had similar impressions. That taxes in USA are hated way more than anywhere else.