Yesterday's Dilbert strip featured in a fun way one of the most troubling realities states are facing lately, losing corporate tax money just when they need it the most. The problem is the state tends to transfer this problem to their citizens without hesitation.
Corporate tax can be quite heavy in some developed countries, so giants like Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft or Oracle fight it by using some techniques that effectively lower they total taxation. I do not want to call neither of these techniques "tax evasion" or similar because then they would be illegal and what said companies are doing is not. I prefer the term tax shifting because that is what they are doing, they are paying their taxes, but they are doing it from countries with a very low (or inexistent) corporate income tax.
