If the government wants a tax to be paid they need to make it simple and unconditional. If there are loopholes or ways to legally avoid it, they will be discovered and people will take advantage of them.
If the government wants a tax to be paid they need to make it simple and unconditional. If there are loopholes or ways to legally avoid it, they will be discovered and people will take advantage of them.
In a good and just society there is a large overlap between them, and in others there is less overlap.
But it's impossible to build a legal system where there is a 100% overlap, and it would most likely be a broken society in other ways.
I totally agree with your second paragraph, that the government needs to remove loopholes and other ways for people to weasel out of contributing to society. But there will always be some corruption and a lot of money to be earned by only taking from our shared resources and never contributing back.
While I agree that taxes provide for a lot of useful, wonderful things, taxes also provide for things I find morally repugnant.
So yes, we should all pay our taxes. But at the same time, I'm fine taking advantage of any legal methods available to me to reduce my tax burden.
The only thing that sucks about that is that tax avoidance generally becomes easier as you get wealthier, which is unfair.