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Re:The missing profits of nations by dbatten on Thursday July 26, 2018 @02:48PM (#17619851)
Yes, making the use of tax havens illegal is very hard. It's basically a giant game of whack-a-mole, where the corporations have more people with stronger incentives working to get around the tax laws than the government has trying to write new ones.

Here's a fun explanation of the kinds of hoops corporations will jump through to dodge taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Re:The missing profits of nations by gaius on Thursday July 26, 2018 @04:39PM (#17620838)
Here's a fun explanation of the kinds of hoops corporations will jump through

You're missing one piece of the puzzle: the Irish government is fully complicit in all this, with a "beggar thy neighbour" strategy to cream off taxes from their supposed partners and allies.

Re:The missing profits of nations by grasshopperpurp on Thursday July 26, 2018 @03:56PM (#17620410)
>where the corporations have more people with stronger incentives working to get around the tax laws than the government has trying to write new ones.

If the penalties were harsh enough, wouldn't it change this dynamic?

Re:The missing profits of nations by freeone3000 on Thursday July 26, 2018 @04:22PM (#17620649)
The problem isn't that large companies are doing illegal things with taxes and aren't getting caught for tax evasion, it's that they structure arrangements in such a way that are legal but problematic, and as soon as a problematic method of doing business outlawed, a new one is put into place.