It's not easy competing against the IKEA machine on a level playing field. It's much harder again when the Australian Tax Office takes 30 per cent of the profits of local shops but only 1 per cent or 2 per cent of IKEA's profits.

The achievement of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is in exposing just how IKEA and many other multinationals get away with it. All perfectly legal, no doubt – just like the twists and turns and geographical contortions employed by Apple and Google and News Corp and Starbucks and Amazon and Caterpillar and, well, just about any big corporation that can.

Two – maybe three – things are necessary for this wholesale perversion of national tax systems: the talented mercenaries that are international tax professionals; complicit tax haven governments; and conflicted, weak-willed governments that have put a crackdown on massive avoidance in the too-hard basket.

A memorable special report by the Economist last year put a figure as high as $20 trillion on the amount of money stashed away from the tax man. "Civilisation works only if those who enjoy its benefits are also prepared to pay their share of the costs," the magazine reminded readers.

And the hollow logs stuffed with untaxed loot aren't just in pliable and/or desperate banana republics. Indeed, the majority of it is cared for in such palm-tree-free zones  as the City of London and Delaware, Ireland and the Netherlands.

This is why it would take a genuine, universal commitment by governments to an equitable international tax system to force the uncivilised multinationals to pay their fair share. It's also why, for all the posturing before the Brisbane G20 meeting, it's unlikely to happen.

While the US government is a key victim of tax avoidance, it also seems beholden to many of the world's biggest tax dodgers. Ditto Britain.

In the meantime, the tax burden continues to fall disproportionately on those without the ability or inclination to avoid it, and on those who believe in supporting civilisation and the society that enables them to be well off.

There are many good people who work for IKEA in Australia. The company has a high level of staff engagement and the staff themselves give generously to charity in company-run campaigns.

UNICEF praises IKEA as its largest corporate sponsor – but it turns out that what IKEA donates has been a tiny fraction of its profits while it assembles its own low tax rate.

It's arguable that there would be less need for corporate philanthropy if corporates behaved ethically in paying tax.