The general theory of tax avoidance

IT used to be said that there were twothings that were unavoidable: death and taxes. There is a widespread feeling today that under our present tax code only one of these is unavoidable. What I wish to discuss today is why this is so, and how the extent of tax avoidance would be af-fected by some of the major tax reforms presently being discussed. To do this, I shall first explain a gen-eral set of principles for tax avoidance,^ (Section I) and then present four methods of implementing these principles (Section II). In Section III, I discuss what deter-mines the limits on the extent to which individuals can take advantage of ta