> "Yes, but I'm not talking about evasion. Evasion would be illegally saying "I earned nothing" and hiding the money. Tax optimizaton by out-smarting the system

> "Yes, but I'm not talking about evasion. Evasion would be illegally saying "I earned nothing" and hiding the money. Tax optimizaton by out-smarting the system is legal though." There's a difference between the spirit of the law and the implementation of the law. If tax laws were perfectly implemented then the loopholes would not exist, but that doesn't necessarily make the intention behind the laws unclear. You've decided to follow the legal options available to you rather than honouring the intended use of the laws. You can call it 'tax optimisation' if you want, but it's just tax evasion under a different name. I can understand why it's tempting, I've probably done similar acts before on a smaller scale (things like avoiding customs duty on some posted items), not something I'm proud of. > "We're still having an extra tax on sparkling wine here in Germany. It was introduced in 1901 to finance the German Imperial Navy to rival the British Empire [1] ..." If you have such laws, then efforts should be made to remove them. Is it harder to remove them than using tax loopholes? Yes, but it's still the right thing to do. Don't German citizens have the right to start a citizens initiative?