As I see it, someone in the UK earns (probably applies to most countries),
£20,000 a year, and pays a ball park figure of £5,000 a year in taxes.
A small business earns £200,000 a year, and pays a ballpark figure of £50,000 a year in taxes.
A huge PLC company in the UK, earns £20 Billion a year, and SHOULD have paid a ballpark figure of £5 Billion a year, in taxes.
But instead pays a team of expert tax avoidance tax accountants, £10,000,000 pounds a year, implements some tax heavens (like you linked to), and other changes to how they account for their earnings/profits/losses etc.
Hence paying only £50 million in taxes, instead of the ballpark £5 billion, they should have been paying.
Legal: Yes.
Morally acceptable, fair and good for society: Maybe not.
The ONLY people you can blame for valid tax deductions are the people in charge - aka the politicians you have elected to office. You can't blame companies for following the law - no matter how bad it is written - intentional or not.
Holland makes a great living out of hosting tax havens.
Ireland makes a great living out of BEING a tax heaven
UK have some tax "havens" - but nowhere near as heavenly as the 2 above
The only way to get rid of all the "unfair" taxations and deductions is to have a tax system that does not allow for tax deductions.
I hope once in the future we will have a blanket 20-25% tax for all with no deductions. Maybe a minimum profit deduction (so don't pay tax of the first XXX.XXX amount) - but no other tax deductions allowed apart from "normal" . That would benefit the "small businesses" or "people" while everyone would be paying a fair tax.
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But when you look at it from another side - without the tax specialists - a lot of companies would end up paying far too much in tax. I know from an expert in the family .. that a lot of tax avoidance actually stems from countries creating really bad and punitive regulations for "external" companies - but then end up opening up cans of worms that defeat the objective the regulator had.
India is a prime example of a country where you as external investor have to be more than careful about how you invest not to be taxed on repatriated profits at a rate HIGHER than the actual repatriated profit. So your profits might be 1000 - but you would totally be taxed 1100 - as both the Indian company is taxed on the "repatriation" and the shareholder is taxed on receiving the money - ending up in a total tax of 110% (or more)
Normally the core principle in tax across borders for companies is you only pay tax once. So if you reside in the UK with your business and own a branch in Spain - then you can deduct the part of tax paid in Spain on the profits on your UK tax bill - as it is already paid. That arrangement creates some stupid scenarios as well. But the smart people have not found a solution yet - and if it was not like that - it would be hard to open a branch in a foreign country - so the foreign country would not get the investments they want (which then insure local hires, salary and tax etc)
So it is not easy - seen from either side.
But blaming anyone but the politicians is not really fair. So do not blame companies for the mistakes of bad government employees writing the laws.
But every single new extra law makes the system more complex - and the more complex the system becomes - the easier it becomes for really smart people to pay less tax.
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