I've noticed lately that a good portion of society views legal tax sheltering and legal reduction of tax burden as immoral.
The thought seems to be if you are making lots of money you are obligated to freely hand over a good chunk of it to the government.
IKEA is very creative in their tax avoidance. Interestingly enough, it may actually be a net gain for the countries where IKEA employs people. Because of their ultra-low tax burden and the fact that the profits mostly have to go back into the business, they are able to pay more employees AND pay their employees more. Those employees in turn pay taxes to support the government.
A simple test to use is to ask what would happen if all organizations did the same thing. It would have to be structured differently.
Nonprofits are barred from distributing profits, and IKEA uses a loop hole - trademark costs - to circumvent this.
As for paying more people better, the evidence doesn't support this. IKEA tends to match standard retail wages: store managers make approximately $125K, and salespeople $28K.[1] Near Vancouver, Canada, IKEA recently weathered a 17 month strike from its union. [2]
The thought seems to be if you are making lots of money you are obligated to freely hand over a good chunk of it to the government.
IKEA is very creative in their tax avoidance. Interestingly enough, it may actually be a net gain for the countries where IKEA employs people. Because of their ultra-low tax burden and the fact that the profits mostly have to go back into the business, they are able to pay more employees AND pay their employees more. Those employees in turn pay taxes to support the government.