How much extra tax did you volunteer to pay last year? Not much, I’m guessing. That doesn’t make you a mean person; it more likely shows that, if you have money to spare, you prefer to give it to good causes than to government officials. And you’d be right: Charities are generally far better at realizing their aims than state bureaucracies.

When it comes to giant companies, though, we apply a very different standard. When we pay the legal minimum, we call it sensible tax planning; when they do the same thing, we call it aggressive tax avoidance.