The history of taxation is the history of people concocting ingenious schemes to avoid their taxes. In ancient Rome, the owners of large estates would bribe the tax collector to delay payment and then lobby the government for a tax holiday that would forgive the taxes they hadn’t paid. In the 18th century, not long after American colonists broke from Britain partly over “taxation without representation,” Swiss banks offered anonymity — for a price — to French nobles looking to hide their wealth from the revolutionary authorities. And so on down to the present day, when about 40 percent of multinational profits, according to a recent economic paper, are sequestered in various tax havens.
Megan McArdle: Here’s a good corporate tax rate: Zero
