Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

> Dissatisfaction is not a limited resource

It is, though. When outrage is misdirected, it lets the true bad guys get off scot–free.

Sure, there are some people who can be angry about everything all day long, but everyone else grows tired to listening to them, and they lose credibility for when it counts.

Their responsibility to "the taxpayer" is a few orders of magnitude less acute than their responsibility to the owners of the company they've been hired to manage.

Having large multinational corporations is hugely beneficial to the Irish economy, through direct employment. Sure any company that is just a brass plaque and funneling money through Ireland is of no benefit, but most of the big ones have significant high quality high tech jobs here. Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, you name it, they all have huge operations here.

Reading the other comments, I looked closer at your choice of professions.

1) Engineers at Google earning 400K+ USD per year are receiving a large chunk in stock grants. I guess 1/3 to 1/2. (And the last 10 years have been very, very good for equity prices in tech majors.) I assume those receive capital gains tax treatment when sold. If held for at least one year, you receive generous tax savings. Is that fair?

2) Radiologist is probably paid 100% cash or part in deferred (cash) comp. I doubt their receive equity in their public/listed hospital group. Dear Reader Doctors: Please correct me if I am wrong! Also: Are you aware of incomes for highly-skilled specialists in other high-developed countries with good national healthcare systems? I guess about 50% less. Look at Germany, Netherlands, France, Japan, etc. The US is a global outlier on healthcare costs and incomes.

3) Investment banker is a loose term, because you can be a very senior quant on Wall Street can earn 500K USD. Or you can be a M&A i-banker or trader or portfolio manager and easily earn more than 500K USD in good years, but a good chunk will be equity. I guess 1/4 to 1/3. If you make crazy money (millions), surely 50% equity. That said, equity in an investment bank isn't a very good investment. Look at the last ten years compared to big tech. Big tech is killing ibanks on equity returns. Still... that equity grant will get beneficial tax treatment. In this narrow scenario, what benefit does this serve for the wider economy? I see little.

4) Lawyers: Probably paid all cash, possibly deferred comp (cash). Most white shoe law firms that can pay 400K+ USD are not public/listed, so equity isn't the same, even if there is /some/ measure of profit-sharing. Please correct me if I am wrong about public/listed law firms. Just before I hit reply, I thought of another type of special case: corporate counsel. If you work an in-house counsel in New York City, you can easily make 400K+ USD as a senior lawyer. And your company probably pays you some equity. (We can all this i-bank/legal hybrid job.)

5) Small business owners: These are essentially small-time executives who can structure all kinds of non-income payments to themselves and reduce their tax burden. Important: I would also separate intellectual property-heavy businesses (high-value services) vs traditional mom-n-pop shops, like chain of gift shops or pizza restaurants. The return-on-equity is hugely different. That said, in most developed economies, small-to-medium enterprises generate the lion's share of new jobs. (Huzzah to that.) Still, the same tax benefits the owner can structure for themselves will not also be arranged for the "normal workers". Again: Is this fair?

> Using sports as an analogy

An example I'm quite familiar with; the Ferrari Formula 1 team used an engine in (at least) 2019, and possibly earlier too, that had momentary higher fuel flow than allowed by the regulations. The regulations were very clear that at no time the flow was to be larger than 100 kg per hour.

The hurdle: enforcing the fuel flow into an engine, running at 12,000 RPM, is hard when you're not the one building it. So the FIA, the governing body, commissioned a fuel flow device that would sit in the fuel line between the tank and the engine, and measure the throughput. The flow was/is measured almost 5,000 times per second.

Ferrari found out how it worked, and simply produced higher throughput when the fuel flow monitor wasn't reading the flow. Entirely genius but highly illegal. Between 2019 and 2020 they were found out, and for the 2020 season they were considerably slower because their engine was designed to use the fuel flow workaround.

TL;DR: even perfectly designed regulations can have problems when it comes to figuring out if something is being broken. In this example, Ferrari got off without a penalty because they in turn helped the governing body figure out a way to catch anyone doing the same thing. This rule break was suspected by competitors and fans alike for the best part of the 2019 series. It wasn't an out-of-the-blue shock. Figuring out what exactly is being done illegally is just not that easy in large, opaque systems.