>...Businesses want to avoid paying taxes when possible, but it's generally not worth their effort to play tax games. A business doesn't pay taxes unless it's m

>...Businesses want to avoid paying taxes when possible, but it's generally not worth their effort to play tax games. A business doesn't pay taxes unless it's making profits, and it would have to be making sufficient profits that the millions they'd spend on consultants and maintaining tax avoidance strategies every year exceeds the actual tax liability by a material amount. For most businesses, that's not worth it. Your original claim was "Actually, history bears out that higher tax rates result in corporations re-investing more of their profits in the company and less in tax-avoidance accounting." To claim that as tax rates go up, companies are less concerned about the amount of tax they pay is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence. >...Tax rates don't drive business decisions. I agree. If there are investment opportunities companies will make them. >...I was comparing corporate tax evasion now to corporate tax evasion in other times. Measured against itself it's at historically high rates. Where are the numbers for recent years? Your source says the tax gap and compliance has stayed pretty much the same since they started trying to estimate it: >...The latest estimates for tax years 2011, 2012 and 2013 show the nation's tax compliance rate is substantially unchanged from prior years.