Some tax planning is clearly legal, and is an expected use of the tax laws.
Some tax planning is clearly illegal. People are hiding money and evading tax.
There is a grey area in between. People use tax laws in unexpected ways. Their accountants and lawyers claim this new planning is legal. The tax authorities claim it isn't. To find out if it's actually illegal it gets tested in court, except no-one wants that. Companies don't want it because lawyers are expensive. Tax authorities don't want it because lawyers are even more expensive for them and it looks terrible if they fail in court. So some weird deal is made. The company repays a trivial amount of tax, some rule gets added or taken away to make it clearer that the tax plan is unlawful.
So, here, a big company can do it because spending many thousands on lawyers and tax accountants means they save hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, on the tax bill.
I can't afford the tax accountant, so those schemes usually are not available to me. And as soon as enough people start using them the laws change, sometimes leaving me in a tricky situation.
How could the double Irish arrangement possibly be considered a grey area? It's incredibly well know, and many of the richest companies use it. I'm pretty sure that if it were truly a legal grey area, there would be court cases testing it, which there aren't to my knowledge.
The double Irish was created by Apple's tax lawyers. It is well known because of that. It has been ruled illegal I think now and Apple is no longer using it. Apple are lobbying hard not to pay billions of back taxes in Ireland as their deals with the government to not pay tax are likely to be ruled illegal by the EU.
Some tax planning is clearly illegal. People are hiding money and evading tax.
There is a grey area in between. People use tax laws in unexpected ways. Their accountants and lawyers claim this new planning is legal. The tax authorities claim it isn't. To find out if it's actually illegal it gets tested in court, except no-one wants that. Companies don't want it because lawyers are expensive. Tax authorities don't want it because lawyers are even more expensive for them and it looks terrible if they fail in court. So some weird deal is made. The company repays a trivial amount of tax, some rule gets added or taken away to make it clearer that the tax plan is unlawful.
So, here, a big company can do it because spending many thousands on lawyers and tax accountants means they save hundreds of thousands, millions, billions, on the tax bill.
I can't afford the tax accountant, so those schemes usually are not available to me. And as soon as enough people start using them the laws change, sometimes leaving me in a tricky situation.