The only way you can beat someone in a lawsuit with money alone (jurisdictions where you can bribe judges excepted), is by preventing the case from ever getting

The only way you can beat someone in a lawsuit with money alone (jurisdictions where you can bribe judges excepted), is by preventing the case from ever getting in front of a judge. It costs a certain amount of money to take a case to trial, and that can be a lot depending on the complexity of the case. But that's a lot to an individual, not to a corporation. Once you can spend that much, you actually have to go in front of a judge and win on merit. The reason that IRS and SEC enforcement actions are harsher on small actors is because they break the law in much more obvious and stupid ways. e.g. not declaring taxable income and writing off obviously personal expenses. Large companies do not do this because the IRS splits penalties with whistleblowers, and any major company hiding income this way would be snitched out in a millisecond by their employees looking for the multi million dollar payout. Large companies do things that exploit loopholes and gray areas in the law, and the IRS is much more inclined to settle when their is a chance they may lose in court if they take it all the way.