I never understood this. They're trying to pay less tax - they're doing it legally & as far as we know not "evading" anything.
You do the same thing on your tax returns to pay as little tax as possible (or get as big a refund as possible). Why is it worse when a corporation does it?
I don't evade taxes by setting up shell persons in various companies. I would look down on someone who did.
Actually I do know someone who maintains a fake residence for tax purposes, and I do look down on her (a wealthy heiress who didn't want to pay inheritance taxes).
No, I'm not implying they're doing something illegal, merely slimy. I would rather people didn't try to avoid paying their fair share to the society they live in. And I won't give such people my business, if I know about it and can help it. They can play the game, and suffering opprobrium for their actions is a valid rule of the game. If you're talking about only what's legal, it's legal for me to blacklist them, blacklist their employees socially, and to encourage others to blacklist them too.
In the context of U.S. taxes, 'evasion' and related words have a loaded meaning, where evasion is the word for illegal activities and avoidance is the word for legal activities.
"Avoidance" is not the word used by normal people. That's a word only used by tax-evasion consultants (and their clients) to euphemistically refer to what they're doing, which is gaming loopholes (many of which they have themselves lobbied to have added to the laws).
Sure, it implies they're scum! That was intended. I'm not going to correct it by using some newspeak bullshit that no regular humans use, like "tax avoidance". This isn't a corporate prospectus! I have never heard a regular person use the term "tax avoidance strategies", only consultants who are trying to differentiate their brand of tax-evasion (technically legal!) from the other brand of tax-evasion.
By choosing your words poorly, you actually are implying that they're doing something illegal. It could be useful to read through the following articles:
The 2nd article you link specifically says it's just a euphemism that was coined by tax advisers to avoid the "pejorative term tax evasion". In common usage, "tax evasion" refers to attempts to evade taxes, as the English words imply. All of those should be illegal, but some aren't, in part because the corrupt motherfuckers who coined the phrase "tax avoidance" have lobbied, and in some cases paid off, legislators to create loopholes.
I'm not going to defer to a bunch of corrupt scumbags coining newspeak when I choose how to use the English language.
In personal income tax situation it would be an equivalent of paying a fee (bribe) to some 80 year old guy to sign him on as a dependent to claim a deduction your our income tax.
You do the same thing on your tax returns to pay as little tax as possible (or get as big a refund as possible). Why is it worse when a corporation does it?