when you have a $10 billion tax bill that you can afford to pay $5 billion to attorneys and accountants to avoid it.
I personally think this is overstated as a root cause. Giant corporations have the same lawyer budget to spend avoiding payroll taxes or GSTs/VATs, but it doesn't make that kind of difference. That's because salaries, sales and value adds are, in practical terms, objective truths. The law & accounting standards define them, locate them to a jurisdiction and that definition is defensible. A transaction either is or isn't a salary, or a sale.
Profit otoh, is subjective. Expenses can be expressed as investments, retained earnings can be expressed as growth. Most importantly, profit doesn't have an objective location.
I personally think this is overstated as a root cause. Giant corporations have the same lawyer budget to spend avoiding payroll taxes or GSTs/VATs, but it doesn't make that kind of difference. That's because salaries, sales and value adds are, in practical terms, objective truths. The law & accounting standards define them, locate them to a jurisdiction and that definition is defensible. A transaction either is or isn't a salary, or a sale.
Profit otoh, is subjective. Expenses can be expressed as investments, retained earnings can be expressed as growth. Most importantly, profit doesn't have an objective location.