Well...
In the main that's true, though there are plenty of cases (i.e. legal cases) that were being brought against some of the more borderline avoidance techniques (which were new, complex or unusual enough that it wasn't entirely clear that they weren't in fact evasion) where legislation hasn't kept pace.

Those are technically avoidance, but only because they haven't been tested in court and found to be evasion. Vodafone (among others) had made provision in their accounts to pay up to about $4bn for one particular scam until the chief exec of HMRC took it upon himself, against his own legal advice, to shakes hands on it and drop the case.

So while, in the number of ways taxes go without being paid, I'm sure you're correct that by far the majority are legitimate avoidance, in the volumes of potential tax going unpaid through the use of those methods, the difference between legal avoidance and illegal evasion is altogether less clear.

Only a small number of methods are questionable legally and/or morally, but vast sums get funnelled through those methods because they're the ones only available to the megarich and to big multinational corporations.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 2 Mar 2012, 12:28, Reply)