Big companies have the opportunity to make tax elusion (there is a reason why many Italian companies have legal HQ in Netherlands or Luxembourg), small companies, artisans and freelancers usually avoid to pajly VAT
> In percentage terms this means that during the 1970s between 15 and 20 percent of Italians evaded taxes while the rate climbed to 26 percent in the 1980s. In the 1990s, tax evasion fell again, hovering between 15 and 20 percent. Workers employed in manufacturing evade very little, whereas the highest evasion rates can be found among the self-employed
> The severity of evasion becomes obvious when we consider that the Italian state annually collects only a total of €350 billion while losing €250 billion through evasion (D’Attoma 2016).
> If one asks Italians why they evade taxes, they primarily say that they evade because everyone else does so
> A distant second is the reason that Italians would be more likely to pay taxes if they had the feeling that the state would spend their money more wisely. Much lower in the ranking come issues such as the soft penalties for evasive behavior, the complexity of the tax rules, and the unlikeliness of being caught. A total of 87.1 percent of all Italians think that their fellow citizens evade taxes
Even if billionaires don't pay income tax and are only taxed occasionally when they sell assets, there isn't much doubt that the corporations they create and invest in generate massive amounts of tax revenue in the countries they operate. Not to mention all the revenue generated from property tax, income tax from their employees getting paid by the company, local fines and fees, sales tax, import duties, etc.
You can want the super wealthy to pay more tax when they sell stuff to fund their lifestyles, but that doesn't mean their work isn't generating large amounts of economic activity which turns into tax revenue for governments.
*if you're a billionaire
> the corporations they create and invest in generate massive amounts of tax revenue
Economic activity does generate tax revenue, billionaires generate economic activity. But if we took the billions (leave them millions, gready as they are) and spread it around it would have the opportunity to generate much more economic activity
The concentration of wealth, and the resulting concentration of income and widespread middle class impoverishment is catastrophic for our economy.
It is why, in real terms, incomes have been static for thirty years whilst the size of the economy has roughly doubled
If we can tell poor people how to behave for their own good then we can certainly help billionaires out too by taxing them back to creativity.