Legal tax avoidance and the nation-state

One good outcome from the Romney candidacy is that it has (at least briefly) focused attention on offshore banking and legal tax avoidance by the wealthy.  Vide these excerpts from a report in The Atlantic:

From individuals, it is clear: you owe taxes from your income and your purchases; you must obey the laws; if necessary, you must go to war; you can elect political officials so that these obligations are tailored more to your liking. The nation-state pledges in turn to give you access to recourse of grievances and to limit the application of violence and harassment to you from official actors. You get rights and responsibilities.

There is, of course, another inhabitant of a nation-state: the corporation. Though originally created specifically as entities that were not supposed to receive the benefits of citizenship, in exchange for which they received the ability to walk away from debts, corporations are getting an improving deal as they move through society as actors, gaining the privileges of individuals while taking on fewer of the obligations associated with being located in a single place.... 

It should be noted that when individuals attempt to place income in foreign bank accounts for these same purposes, they are either arrested for tax evasion or subject to an audit (unless, it seems, they are Mitt Romney caught using offshore tax havens that happen to be perfectly legal). You are probably free of the legal concerns, at least, if you are an individual whose wealth is so significant that it can be arranged into trusts, corporations, funds, and other legal frameworks. In that case, while the benefit to the individual in question might be significant -- qualifying for 0 to 15 percent interest as opposed to 33 to 60 percent, depending on the countries involved -- the responsibility of that individual to pay for offramps and old folks homes is suddenly lifted...

Yet, at the same moment, we have corporations and individuals-rich-enough-to-be-corporations whose money is not fully expected to contribute to any of the projects of the nation-state: security, transportation, health, science. The nation-state whispers to them in a somewhat more tentative voice, "Well, we're willing to negotiate." And as to the rest of us, we're not sure to whom these institutions belong. The nation-state looks the other way as corporate money wends its way from Seychelles to Mauritius to Ireland while lobbyists negotiate special tax rates should the money finally arrive "home" -- but is quick to write checks for all the tax credits it promised... 

Earlier this week, when I tried to chastise President Obama for letting a super-PAC support his re-election bid, I was told that it would be stupid not to take advantage of that tactic.  "Don't take a knife to a gunfight."  "If it's legal, do it."  I wonder if those same sentiments will be echoed here - it's legal (for corporations and the wealthy to avoid taxes), so it's ethically o.k. for them to do so. 

Personally, I don't buy that argument.