Tax avoidance in the context of "Tax havens"

Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) refers to corporate tax avoidance strategies used by multinationals to "shift" profits from higher-tax jurisdictions to lower-tax jurisdictions or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity, thus "eroding" the "tax-base" of the higher-tax jurisdictions using deductible payments such as interest or royalties. For the government, the tax base is a company's income or profit. Tax is levied as a percentage on this income or profit. When that income or profit is transferred to a tax haven, the tax base is eroded and the company does not pay taxes to the country that is generating the income. As a result, tax revenues are reduced and the country is disadvantaged. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) define BEPS strategies as "exploiting gaps and mismatches in tax rules". While some of the tactics are illegal, the majority are not. Because businesses that operate across borders can utilize BEPS to obtain a competitive edge over domestic businesses, it affects the righteousness and integrity of tax systems. Furthermore, it lessens deliberate compliance, when taxpayers notice multinationals legally avoiding corporate income taxes. Because developing nations rely more heavily on corporate income tax, they are disproportionately affected by BEPS.

Corporate tax havens offer BEPS tools to "shift" profits to the haven, and additional BEPS tools to avoid paying taxes within the haven (e.g. Ireland's "CAIA tool"). BEPS activities cost nations 100–240 billion dollars in lost revenue each year, which is 4–10 percent of worldwide corporate income tax collection. It is alleged that BEPS tools are associated mostly with American technology and life science multinationals. A few studies showed that use of the BEPS tools by American multinationals maximized long-term American Treasury revenue and shareholder return, at the expense of other countries.

Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the illegal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term "noncompliance" is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.

In the United States, the use of the term 'noncompliance' often refers only to illegal misreporting. Laws known as a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) statutes which prohibit "tax aggressive" avoidance have been passed in several developed countries including the United States (since 2010), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Norway and Hong Kong. In addition, judicial doctrines have accomplished the similar purpose, notably in the United States through the "business purpose" and "economic substance" doctrines established in Gregory v. Helvering. Though the specifics may vary according to jurisdiction, these rules invalidate tax avoidance which is technically legal but not for a business purpose or in violation of the spirit of the tax code. Related terms for tax avoidance include tax planning and tax sheltering.

Share repurchase, also known as share buyback or stock buyback, is the reacquisition by a company of its own shares. It represents an alternative way of returning money to shareholders instead of dividends. Repurchases allow stockholders to legally reduce taxes, where instead of paying tax on dividends they pay the lower taxes on the capital gains when selling the stock, whose price is now proportionally higher because of the smaller number of shares outstanding.

In most countries, a corporation can repurchase its own stock by distributing cash to existing shareholders in exchange for a fraction of the company's outstanding equity; that is, cash is exchanged for a reduction in the number of shares outstanding. The company either retires the repurchased shares or keeps them as treasury stock, available for reissuance.

The Double Irish arrangement was a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax avoidance tool used mainly by United States multinationals since the late 1980s to avoid corporate taxation on non-US profits. (The US was one of a small number of countries that did not use a "territorial" tax system, and taxed corporations on all profits, no matter whether the profit was made outside the US or not, in contrast to "territorial" tax systems which tax only profits made within that country.) It was the largest tax avoidance tool in history. By 2010, it was shielding US$100 billion annually in US multinational foreign profits from taxation, and was the main tool by which US multinationals built up untaxed offshore reserves of US$1 trillion from 2004 to 2018. Traditionally, it was also used with the Dutch Sandwich BEPS tool; however, 2010 changes to tax laws in Ireland dispensed with this requirement.

Despite US knowledge of the Double Irish for a decade, it was the European Commission that in October 2014 forced Ireland to close the scheme, starting in January 2015. However, users of existing schemes, such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Pfizer, were given until January 2020 to close them. At the announcement of the closure, it was known that multinationals had replacement BEPS tools in Ireland, the Single Malt (2014), and Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets (CAIA) (2009):

Illegal logging is the harvest, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests; extraction without permission, or from a protected area; the cutting down of protected species; or the extraction of timber in excess of agreed limits. Illegal logging is a driving force for a number of environmental issues such as deforestation, soil erosion and biodiversity loss which can drive larger-scale environmental crises such as climate change and other forms of environmental degradation.

Illegality may also occur during transport, such as illegal processing and export (through fraudulent declaration to customs); the avoidance of taxes and other charges, and fraudulent certification. These acts are often referred to as "wood laundering".