Tax evasion is doing things that violate the laws.
I avoid taxes all the time. When I was a kid I was told to buy one comic book at a time because they cost 10 cents. There was a 4% sales tax. The tax on 10 cents was 0.4 cents and that rounded to 0. If I bought two then the total was 20 cents. The tax on 20 cents was 0.8 cent, and that rounded to a penny. Buy them in separate transactions, you go in with a quarter and you leave with a nickel. Buy them as one transaction and you go in with a quarter and leave with 4 pennies.
That's tax avoidance. It's not different from claiming all the possible legal exemptions. Child care credit, child tax credit, all the appropriate deductions. I've claimed part of my living space when I was a freelancer and had no office. I depreciated my computer to the greatest extent possible because I bought it for freelancing and used it most of the time for work. Can't do that now, so I don't. Didn't ever *need* to do it. That's tax avoidance.
When I go outside the US borders I bring back stuff I'd like to buy in the US but which have hefty tariffs imposed. I brought back the legal limit to avoid having to pay duties on it. When travelling with friends, I had them declare the goods. That's also tax avoidance.
Nobody likes what the rich do primarily because they're rich. If I had enough money, I could do the same thing. In fact, to some extent I do. My taxable income is far, far less than the amount I'm actually paid. I have a stipend, I deduct stuff pre-tax, and I chuck a fair amount into a tax-exempt retirement account. My father, years ago, took a lump-sum distribution for his retirement. In order to avoid a punitive income tax rate he arranged before it was issued to him to have every cent go into an IRA and then it sat there, untouched, until he hit the right age. There it still sits, years after his death, because the mandatory draw-down has never brought it back to even 140% of the original sum. It's entailed, so when the current person holding it dies, it passes probate and taxes and goes to the designated beneficiary. (That, by the way, is not me.)
My parents put the rest of their property in a family trust. When my mother passes, if there's anything left then it'll go to me--strictly speaking, the assets are already jointly held by my mother and me and it's been put in a survivor's trust so it's beyond reach for a number of purposes. My parents weren't wealthy. They each worked in a steel mill, my mother hourly and my father salaried but at the lowest possible rank--foreman. They just lived frugally and saved. (Like my aunt, who died a decade ago with upwards of $3 million in the bank and in investments, but who worked as a secretary at the Veteran's administration and whose husband worked as a clerk for the same steel mill. No kids, no vacations, no eating out. And put money in lots of municipal bonds, T-bills, and when possible tax-sheltered accounts.)
All of that is tax avoidance. There's not a single thing illegal in any of it, as far as I'm aware. A lot of it used to be called "tax sheltering," and got the same moralistic opprobrium from those who wanted the pool of tax money to be larger or those with more money to be punished.
Strictly speaking, I could go in with a bunch of other people and do exactly what the rich do. It's just that with my paltry $20k it doesn't make sense to do all the paperwork and to find some place to offshore the money to avoid taxes, and I'm not a corporation so the entire corporate inversion "thing" simply can't apply. Still, I'm sure that since I'm in the top 45% many in the bottom 20% would find what I do immoral and try to say it's illegal, because for many the two can't be distinguished. We are in the 35% tax bracket; our federal taxes for 2016 were 6.4%. They usually hover between 5-6.5%.
Another thing that a lot of people are missing is the difference between assets and income. If I had $5 million to put offshore, even if I left it here I wouldn't be paying taxes on it. It's wealth, and we have no wealth tax. Not for you, not for me, not for the super-rich or the uber-indigent. The reason to offshore would be the tax on the income on that money, but if I bring it home then I'm very likely going to pay taxes on it. Until I bring it back into the US, I could reinvest a greater amount because I have more after taxes. If I go overseas, I could access the cash directly without paying US taxes on it, I suspect (but I also suspect that at that point it does become tax evasion.)
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