But then in my peer group I'm the only one who thinks that way. Most people would rather want everyone else to be as highly taxed as themselves than lower taxes overall it seems.
I'm all for minimising taxes within the legal framework, but that does not mean I agree with all the legal details.
In this particular case, there is something wrong with how large multinationals are able to avoid paying any taxes at all, it's a major problem in my country, Belgium, as well.
I don't agree with your last statement that people would rather want everyone else to be equally highly taxed than lower taxes overall.
I think people just want their tax legislation to be _fair_, and while that is definitely a fungible concept, these large multinationals are crossing the line for the majority of people.
Tax evasion ends up pushing up taxes for everyone else, it's not your government that you're short changing, it's your family, it's your friends, it's your neighbours. This may sound harsh, but it's just the reality of the situation. I hope you will give it a second thought next time.
If I pay more than I'm required to by law then I pay too much by definition.
>Wouldn't it be better if the loopholes were fixed but there was a reduction in tax charged too?
Of course this would be better and ideal. But it's a curious things with politicians. New taxes come easily. But they seldom leave voluntarily.
We're still having an extra tax on sparkling wine here in Germany. It was introduced in 1901 to finance the German Imperial Navy to rival the British Empire [1] ...
>Tax evasion ends up pushing up taxes for everyone else, it's not your government that you're short changing
Yes, but I'm not talking about evasion. Evasion would be illegally saying "I earned nothing" and hiding the money. Tax optimizaton by out-smarting the system is legal though.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaumweinsteuer (German)
There's a difference between the spirit of the law and the implementation of the law. If tax laws were perfectly implemented then the loopholes would not exist, but that doesn't necessarily make the intention behind the laws unclear.
You've decided to follow the legal options available to you rather than honouring the intended use of the laws. You can call it 'tax optimisation' if you want, but it's just tax evasion under a different name. I can understand why it's tempting, I've probably done similar acts before on a smaller scale (things like avoiding customs duty on some posted items), not something I'm proud of.
> "We're still having an extra tax on sparkling wine here in Germany. It was introduced in 1901 to finance the German Imperial Navy to rival the British Empire [1] ..."
If you have such laws, then efforts should be made to remove them. Is it harder to remove them than using tax loopholes? Yes, but it's still the right thing to do. Don't German citizens have the right to start a citizens initiative?
If you want to pay the least possible taxes, don't be surprised if your government will do its best to not support you, to not help you, to not listen to you...
"The less you pay, the less you'll get paid.
The more you pay, the more you'll get paid."
I feel that's a sad attitude when you're making every effort possible to contribute as little as possible.
At least you're honest about it, it feels like a prevalent attitude.
Even the minimum is more than enough. I'm not talking here about making my own dutch-irish-sandwich where I pay no taxes or just straight out lying when declaring my taxes.
It's more about getting it from 40% to 30% by depreciating my iPhone as an instrument for software development, etc.
But maybe I'm just lacking the moral strength to voluntarily pay more than I need to. ;)