Is it a duty of every business to avoid paying taxes?

Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump may not have paid any federal income tax for 18 years, after declaring a $916 million loss in his business in 1995. Democrats are cock-a-hoop at this proof of Trump's 'perfidy'. Republicans, on the other hand, see nothing wrong in paying as little tax as possible. Former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani hailed Trump a 'genius' for avoiding taxes. "If you have a set of laws, you live by those laws," said Giuliani. "And the reality is, you are ignoring completely the fiduciary obligation he has to all the people around him to run his business at the lowest possible expense." So according to Giuliani, who was a lawyer, Trump must run his business according to laws of the nation and it is his duty to minimize costs of running his business, by paying as little tax as possible. Hillary Clinton has promised to raise taxes on rich people, including inheritance tax. This has brought riposte from Rep Kristi Noem, who got a tax bill on her father's estate just after his accidental death by suffocation, in a grain bin. Clinton, once a very successful lawyer, probably knows that her proposal has no chance of passing Congress, especially if Republicans keep control of the House. She is not popular as it is, so if Democrats win the House she would be stuck. The amount of tax avoided by Trump is small change compared to $14.5 billion that Apple has been ordered to pay to Ireland by the European Union antitrust regulator. Everybody hates paying taxes but the richer you are the more you can avoid by paying tax lawyers. Warren Buffet has often claimed that he pays a lower rate of tax than his secretary, although his claim has been disputed by economists. Ireland has decided to challenge the regulator's decision on Apple. Ireland has a low corporate tax rate of 12.5% but Apple paid no tax in Ireland because its intellectual property was held in the US and, a sweetheart deal with the IRS in the US, meant that Apple paid virtually no taxes at all. Prof Yanis Varoufakis, who was Finance Minister of Greece for a short period in 2015, is bitter about the EU protecting German banks at the cost of the people of Ireland. But, he feels that rich corporations should not be allowed to avoid paying taxes. Another professor, Kinshuk Jha, finds it curious that countries in the EU are trying to protect multinational companies from paying legitimate taxes. Why are these countries helping hugely wealthy companies from paying taxes? With global growth rate forecast to remain weak in the medium term governments are keen to attract businesses to their countries, which will create jobs. The obvious solution is to have a uniform tax rate across all the countries in the world but that is not going to happen. So the rich will escape. Only we are stuck.