International Consultant Salary Packaging

[ASB]

Another example is transfer pricing, companies regularly sell goods to foreign subsiduaries to shift profits from high tax countries to low tax countries even though the goods physically never move. Again this might be immoral but is perfectly legal.

Transfer pricing is well on the radar and has been for years. It's one of the main reasons why we stopped having Datsuns and the franchise reverted to Nisssan.

Octav Botnar did a runner to Switzerland allegedly owing 200 million in evaded tax.

[BlasterBates]

Yes it is on the radar and it the laws in different countries are constantly being revised to minimise it and virtually all major international companies still use it to reduce tax. Transfer pricing is not per se illegal and if they do it rightly, it is tax avoidance, if they get it wrong, potentially it is tax evasion; that is, why it is "grey" and not blatant tax evasion. Most of these schemes are various shades of "grey", there´s no disputing it. But behind each one of them is a valid legal argument; the danger is not being arrested in the middle of the night like what would happen in the case of hiding income, but the IR challenging the legallity in a longwinded court case.