Only the poor pay taxes. I used to work for a company in Sweden owned by Nestlé. In our monthly all hands meetings our CFO would always present 2 sets of numbers, one where it showed our financials without licencing fees. This would show an about 5% margin, pretty healthy for a food manufacturer. This was shown to us so that we wouldn't be so depressed. Then it was the numbers with licencing fees. Theese would always show a margin of about 0.01 percent. We where taxed on the 0.01 percent. The rest would go to Nestlé where they would pay no tax at all because the canton in Swizerland where they where registered had no tax on licences.
IKEA’s founder did the same thing, moving from Sweden to Lausanne Switzerland to avoid tax. Switzerland has taxes, but they can be negotiated to flat values rather than rates on income.
That someone would need to understand tax law in the Netherlands and Lichtenstein. It's possible that in those jurisdictions, this type of corporate arrangement is very much within the spirit of the law. Hopefully a European expert chimes in.
A comment above states that IKEA is very much a for-profit operation. I don't quite understand that. Whether an organization is for-profit or non-profit, they are all businesses in the sense that the cash-in must match cash-out. Most American hospitals are non-profits, but look at the way they conduct operations. Some for-profits receive grants from foundations for doing work that would be considered charitable.
The only real difference between non-profits and for-profit corporations is that the former do not have shareholders. Both types of organizations can still issue monstrous bonuses to employees and offer performance-based compensation (commission for donations generated, etc). But it's only with a for-profit company that the owner(s) can sell the company, or pieces of it.
same as insurance companies (like Blue Cross Blue Shield), or asset managers (Vanguard) are nonprofits, yet still manage to make a nice profit for people involved.
When your income crosses certain threshold, it makes sense to spend hundreds of thousands on consultants for tax planning, optimizing, etc, usually staffed with former tax auditors and lawyers
