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> I would be totally fine if society made moves to close loopholes but I can't blame people for leveraging loopholes..

The first step in the right direction, then, is for people to become aware of these highly unsavory (but legal) practices. It's not going to be an easy fight. The kind of people that setup multiple shell companies to obfuscate the ownership of their assets have worked deliberately to extract wealth and game the system to a level that is unimaginable (at least for me before I heard about the related Panama Papers story that broke a couple years ago).

Ultimately, as we approach a global society with insane levels of wealth inequality and where public infrastructure and social safety nets have started to come apart at the seams, it's imperative that these "loopholes" get closed. Otherwise, we're going to be revisiting Feudalism in 21st century western democracies. Sadly some people seem to want that. They see it as a kind of gilded age lords and their servants.

> They see it as a kind of gilded age lords and their servants.

The vexing thing is that everyone thinks that they are going to end up on the "lord" side of this duality. I think this is the biggest lie of the 20th and 21th century; that this game is in any way, shape or form a fair one. The game is rigged and while everyone seems to recognize this on some level, almost everyone is trying to keep it rigged in the delusion that they be the masters one day.

The fools.

Meritocracy is a giant myth (often completely unconnected to the underlying data), but it's important to recognize that it's just the latest in a long line of myths that have been told to justify inequality. For centuries, the wealth of the nobility and the clergy vis-a-vis the third estate was justified by appealing to the harmony of a tripartite society. In the ownership societies of the 19th century, inequality was often justified by pointing to the various rules and laws that governed and sacralized property rights (which were theoretically available to anyone) upon which stability and good governance depended.

While I see what you're saying, I don't think that I completely agree with you because the wealthy using these techniques (especially if they are politicians, but even if not) are undermining public confidence in the tax regime. If Nancy Pelosi or the President of Azerbaijan are conducting their own affairs in one way while advocating for something else, why should I believe their supposed commitments to a socially equitable taxation regime or desire to make the world a better place?

>On superficial reading, this story conflates tax minimization with cases of corruption.

Yes but many of the tax loopholes are just the result of the corruption of power (legal or not). It's only obvious to the people who benefit from it, so no one bats an eye.

As others on this thread have pointed out, tax laws generally outlaw sham loans, licensing arrangements, etc. When that kind of cleverness works, it usually needs a boost from corruption since the tax laws already exclude it.

Some of those wealthy people are so-called "royals" - paid by tax-payers.

These stories always do that as it fulfills a fetish.

But in any case, would your opinion change if the tax resident or provider wrote the tax law that got passed? In Mossack Fonsaco’s case that is what they did in a variety of island nations.

I am not very familiar with this but on the surface what you describes sounds like corruption to me so yes very much against that.

> I would be totally fine if society made moves to close loopholes but I can't blame people for leveraging loopholes that exist because we should all do that.

You can still blame for bribing politicians to create these loopholes in the first place.