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Comment by z3t4 | Hacker News Reader

Move (on paper) to a country that doesn't tax offshore, then base your company on some island. Have offices in every major city, then send all net income to your offshore company. Make max tax reduction in the countries you operate and get financial aid from the tax money others pay.

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True. The cruise lines did this, although now it may come back to haunt them, assuming they are unable to lobby for US government aid.

> U.S. Royal Caribbean is based in Liberia, Norwegian Cruise Lines is based in Bermuda, and Carnival/Princess is based in Panama.

Avoiding taxes by relocating is not just for big businesses. It’s super easy to do today in the golden age of remote work.

Plenty of people have left CA for UT/NV to do the same.

But then that’s a physical move. Plenty of companies have their executives/leadership in a location that is different from the taxable entity. If all the headquarters and executives physically resided in Caiman islands or Ireland or even Delaware, it would be different.

You'll find that many rich folk are non-doms in the country they reside in for tax purposes also.

Yes, it’s easier for businesses to relocate than people. This is an issue of physicality, not morality. If we drive into the specifics, it’s not hard to illustrate that businesses are fundamentally different in nature than people. My point is that tax avoidance is commonplace for individual returns as well.

The solution to all of this is to fix the tax code to represent what we actually intended, not blame those who are following the rules.

Tax is simply math, calling tax avoidance immoral is as silly as calling encryption immoral.

It's not like the law makers are unaware of the loop-holes, but by making the rules more complicated you increase the cost of doing business, to the degree that you benefit from economy of scale, meaning the big companies still wins.

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