Bernie Sanders Was Right to Oppose the Panama Free Trade Agreement

I consider violating the spirit of a law the same as violating the letter of it.

So, yes.

Like most moral questions, It's Complicated.

Even straight personal theft has a range, from the obviously amoral (snatching an old lady's purse) to the morally ambiguous (Robin Hood stealing from aristocrats to feed starving peasants).

Are there legitimate reasons for tax avoidance? Yes. For example, if you were rich but had the misfortune to live in the regime-controlled part of Syria, you'd be stuck there now, and nobody would fault you for trying your very best to move your assets elsewhere to avoid funding a corrupt and murderous government.

So to your abstract question about whether tax evasion is theft, I'd say "sometimes".

However, the specific cases we're talking about here, revealed by the Mossack Fonseca leak, were definitely theft.

There's a perverse trend of rich people in rich, democratic countries who consider themselves above taxation. They're in free countries, and they're free to leave: if they really wanted to take a moral stand against taxation, they could pull an Eduardo Saverin, give up their citizenship, and emigrate to a low-tax country. Instead they stay and lie about their income.

The poor don't pay taxes because they can't. The middle and upper middle class pay taxes, often a huge fraction of their income, because they can't not. Only the truly rich have the flexibility and resources to set up, say, a system of Panamanian shell companies.

It becomes even more starkly amoral and flagrantly hypocritical when elected officials do it.

evasion is theft. avoidance is fiscally prudent.

Well, only if you're using any of the things which tax money paid for, like public roads or courts or public libraries or etc. etc. If you're a hermit living in the forest not using any of that, I think it's totally legit to not pay your taxes.

> Weather it's Delaware corps (sic)

What? Delaware corporations are completely standard. The state bureaucracy is fairly efficient, the laws are reasonable, lawyers well versed in Delaware corporate law are readily available in all 50 states, etc. It's not about tax avoidance.