Back when Commodore was a company I had the opportunity to get a look at its tax structure (I was interviewing for a VP position with the parent company). It was pretty impressive how effectively one could exploit nominal loop-holes in various jurisdiction tax codes to achieve near zero taxation.
One of the more dubious strategies was having a company in the Cayman Islands that owned the cars that people drove and paid for the gas and maintenance out of corporate accounts, and paid rent and bought food for folks. So your salary could be 'poverty' level and yet you could have quite a nice lifestyle. The poor company in the Caymans was losing money quite rapidly.
As a systems guy I had to be impressed at how they worked that particular system. A CPA friend of mine once quipped that if laziness was the mother of invention, taxation was the father of innovative accounting.
I'd like to note that the US is also a noted tax haven for foreign countries. We aggressively allow our country act as a tax shield for European and Asian companies so we should be throw rocks either when we live in a glass house
I'm not sure that makes sense. Let's say, hypothetically, the Europe and Asia have a tax rate of 99%. We offer a tax rate to foreign companies of 2%, to make it obviously worthwhile to funnel their money through the US. At the same time, we tax US companies at 98%. This makes sense because it maximizes revenue -- US companies aren't going to go abroad, and everyone else in the world will want to give us 2% of their money. Epic win.
When you combine state and federal taxes, the U.S. currently has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world (second only to Japan, last I heard). It makes no sense to use a high-tax jurisdiction as a tax haven.
One of the more dubious strategies was having a company in the Cayman Islands that owned the cars that people drove and paid for the gas and maintenance out of corporate accounts, and paid rent and bought food for folks. So your salary could be 'poverty' level and yet you could have quite a nice lifestyle. The poor company in the Caymans was losing money quite rapidly.
As a systems guy I had to be impressed at how they worked that particular system. A CPA friend of mine once quipped that if laziness was the mother of invention, taxation was the father of innovative accounting.