As long as there are taxes, there will be tax avoidance. This turns out to even be true of at least one government operation:
The state-owned Dutch railway company NS has managed to cut its Dutch tax bill by at least €250m since 1999 by routing the cost of new trains through Ireland, the Volkskrant reported at the weekend.
The tax dodge means the treasury has lost out on income generated by a company it owns, the paper points out. The finance ministry, meanwhile, is said to be ‘unhappy’ about the arrangement, which it has been aware of from the beginning.
Through some tricky maneuvering, the NS’s Irish financial wing 
bought trains in Ireland, where taxes are lower, and then rented the new trains to the Dutch public railway. Even though the trains had never run in Ireland.
Ah, the advantages of globalism!
Political posturing then ensued, with talk of “lack of morals” rampant. An economist touted for his expertise on railways charged that the “NS is busy ‘playing at being a company.’ But the NS is not a company but a government service, he said.”
Government service or no, the players at the NS had a very businesslike response, claiming (quite plausibly) that the “tax route” allowed it to “better compete in the market.”
The lesson I draw from this is one some politicians won’t want to hear: High taxes are bad. They cripple enterprise, including government enterprise. When your government operations turn to elaborate tax-avoidance schemes, you should be planning tax decreases. And accompanying decreases in spending.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.