To be clear, 'tax evasion' is illegal.
Most companies do what they can to avoid paying taxes, which is rational in some ways, but they usually don't do anything illegal.
It's important that we don't mix the two :)
Where it gets prickly is when companies game the system and find ways to reduce tax that the sovereign clearly would outlaw, but cannot for structural or political reasons. Still not illegal, but not exactly awesome either.
If you have $1M in a Swiss bank account earning capital gains, and don't declare it to the IRS - that's 'tax evasion'.
If you have a company in Switzerland generating revenue, and decide not to bring back your profits to America to get hit with another tax, and just let it sit in Switzlerland - that's a 'tax avoidance' strategy.
'Tax evasion' = illegal.
'Tax avoidance' = doing everything you can within the boundaries of the law to not pay taxes. There are some wierd loopholes due to the way taxation works across borders.
Tax avoidance does not. It involves complete honesty with the tax authorities, who then charge you less tax, as the rules state they should. The definition of "avoidance" is therefore intensely political - avoidance tends to be defined as lawful behaviour by other people the speaker would prefer paying for government instead of them!
The distinction matters to: decision-makers at the firm in question, shareholders of the firm in question, the sovereign collecting the taxes[1]. And given the the dispute resolution with large corps' tax issues rarely involves people going to jail or even admissions of fault, I'm not sure why anyone outside of that group should care about the (extremely blurry) legality boundaries.
Bottom line: most of the rest of us have no obligation to care about their word-choice sensitivities and are free to use language for our own ends.
[1] Possibly noninclusive list.
This is a continuum that stretches from clearly illegal schemes through hazy waters, into calm water like deducting salaries and cost of goods sold from revenue and paying tax on the balance. For individuals "tax avoidance" includes deducting charity contributions and taking advantage of things like deductions for dependents. If that is not "unethical" to you then you need to make a distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion.
Many people believe "is it legal" is a good line to use. You may differ on that, but you can't escape the dichotomy.
Important to lawful civilizations.
If you think that there should be better regulations around setting transfer pricing, then vote for it.
Unless companies are breaking the law, then there is a very profound 'distinction'.
Some tax issues are easily resolved, or at least, easily improved. 'Transfer pricing' is not one of them. It's very thorny.
I for one think that Apple's argument of 'the innovation and design is done in California - not Ireland' - is pretty reasonable.
Im fact - the US government should be reaping most of the tax dollars that Apple generates, not Ireland.
That said - if they have operations in Ireland they should be paying taxes there.
I think that a company should pay it's 'primary corporate tax' in the place where it is incorporated and has it's major operations.
And then ancilliary countries like Ireland can tax them at a corporate rate, but discounted for what they payed in America. Ireland's biggest tax receipts from Apple should come from VAT - which is the fairest tax of them all, because it's applied to each iPhone sale in Ireland, not France or wherever.
Currently - it's upside down: if a Canadian company has a subsidiary in France, they pay their corp tax rate in France for sales there - and then only a 4% remittance fee to Canada. To me that's backwards.
The American system is the worst: American companies pay full tax overseas - and then full tax back in America. Plus American corporate taxes are high.
You seem to have misread. I was arguing about word choice about tax policy, not tax policy. I choose to recognize a range of behavior as "evasion". That's what we're talking about. None of your post is relevant to what I wrote.
So - it's not up to you to decide what is 'tax evasion'.
You can commandeer the term if you want, but you'd have to be very clear that you are doing that.