If McDonald's is selling a 10 piece McNuggets for $1.49, and a 20 piece for $4.99, then buying 2 x 10 piece McNuggets for $2.98 is a loophole around paying $4.99. If you find it immoral, so be it, but it doesn't change that you're paying more for McNuggets than McDonald's requires you to pay.

Don't fall for it.

It's not that complicated. If you are a business, don't sell stuff at a loss. If you want to sell stuff at a loss to drive traffic to your store, you're going to take a loss. Don't blame your customers.

The ordinary taxpayer isn’t in a position to exploit interactions between n jurisdictions tax codes, are they?

If you're not that rich then it doesn't make sense to go all out optimizing your taxes because the savings aren't big enough and the costs of doing so are high enough to make the net result a savings.

Not being rich enough to have access to certain tax avoiding structures is like complaining you not being able to get the savings of buying a ton of dish soap because you don't have a fork lift.

People avoid taxes all the time, it's just that 5% savings on an average income doesn't save millions of dollars and cause Twitter to hate them.

Personally, I take the mortgage interest deduction, claim my real dependents, and put as much into my 401K as is legally allowed. Those are all tax avoidance strategies that people routinely engage in.

But the former is not illegal while the latter most definitely is (unless it's your own software, etc.).

Loophole has negative connotations. But it really depends on many factors.

A prosperity gospel preacher buying a second LearJet tax free is not the same as a company hiring contractors to stay under 500 employees in order to retain some small-business benefit.

"It's just crazy, but somehow, accidentally, we passed this big tax law and hedge fund managers don't have to pay taxes! Oh well! I guess we can't ever fix it, either! Crazy accident!"

The second company, well if you take a minute to read this article it explains the price society pays for the second policy: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...

I'm not really defending the first example, but america has a bit too much "privatize profits, externalize losses" for my taste. These policies do have impacts on the life of the median american.

During the Nuremberg trials the Nazis that stood accused actually unsuccessfully tried to exploit what was essentially loop holes in international law.

The real problem is that the corporate tax shouldn't exist. It's too easy to fuck with and manipulate a profit tax by being creative with what counts as revenue and what counts as expense. And tax incidence studies have repeatedly shown that the burden of corporate taxes fall disproportionately on labor, not capital. The better idea would be to eliminate the corporate tax entirely, taking the world's entire corporate tax avoidance scheme with it, and instead tax personal income, dividends, and capital gains at higher rates. It would actually be more progressive and far less avoidable, and mountains less complex.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/7/16618038/h...