I mean, there's an entire area of accounting called tax planning where accountants consult with businesses about how to conduct business to reduce their tax bur

I mean, there's an entire area of accounting called tax planning where accountants consult with businesses about how to conduct business to reduce their tax burden. Avoiding paying taxes isn't some obscure thing that people do, it's something you can make a six-figure salary doing as a profession. Additionally, there is no shortage of data for changing taxes. There are more than enough natural experiments as well as actual municipal experiments testing how people react to taxes. It turns out that most people avoid spending money they don't have to. People like money and they go out of their way to keep it.