Few people do.

Most people attempt to fill out their returns in a rather straightforward manner as laid out by the forms. The loopholes are not published in the tax forms.

I don’t think it’s a few.

Did you put money in a 401k?

Did you buy a house and calculate the tax deduction?

Did you hold onto a stock so you’d get the lower long term capital gains rate?

Did you contribute to an HSA or FSA?

The majority of people make decisions that optimize their tax rate.

Only 30 percent of Americans itemize and less than half even have a 401(k). 46% do not own any stock at all, either directly or indirectly through retirement savings. We are definitely not talking about the majority here.

Owning a house pre-SALT changes? Home ownership rates are in the 60% range.

Have an FSA or HSA?

You can cherry pick my examples.

If you think minimizing your tax rate starts and ends with line items on the 1040, you are not minimizing your tax rate.

Not by a long shot.

It is double think to call the act of minimizing the state of having achieved the absolute minimum while still using the word to describe corporations which are indeed paying more than the absolute minimum.

You are being dishonest in discourse to use that word with different definitions depending on who you apply it to. Either regular people are minimizing taxes when they use rules to reduce taxes, and thus so are corporations. Or neither regular people nor corporations are minimizing taxes because neither has achieved the absolute minimum.

That's my point. They're not opting to do so morally. They're not aware such loopholes exist. I'd be willing to bet most people you talk about wouldn't think twice to reduce their tax bill