There is a final defense against excessive taxation, one that tyrants and their henchmen have been railing against since the pharaoh sent his armies chasing Moses to the Red Sea: Those who face unacceptable levels of confiscation of their lives and labor and the fruits thereof, can simply go elsewhere.

In the old days, that required a Conestoga wagon, or steerage fare on some steamer. But in this age of Internet commerce, an interesting question begins to arise: In just what jurisdiction can a given electronic transaction or fund transfer be said to have occurred? Is it fraud for a corporation to arrange things so its most profitable divisions are incorporated in lower-tax jurisdictions like Nevada or Wyoming?

"Forget complicated wire transfers to the Cayman Islands or secret Swiss deposit boxes," the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. "Californians who want to hide their money from tax authorities are increasingly opting for a simpler alternative: socking it away just over the state line. ... Seminars, webcasts and radio advertisements bray that it's easy to slash a California tax bill -- or eliminate it altogether -- by creating a corporation in Nevada, where there is no income tax on businesses or individuals.

"Promoters peddling the packages call it good tax planning," offered Times reporter Evan Halper. "California officials call it something else: tax fraud."

But it's the complexity of the tax code itself that teaches businessmen the wisdom of setting up separate corporations to, say, own a California bakery's ovens and lease them right back to a bakery owned by the same parties, thus creating a "leasing cost" to offset profits.

If a smart businessman now takes the additional step of locating that "equipment holding company" -- and its profit-generating potential -- in Nevada or some other lower-tax jurisdiction, who created the situation that made it worthwhile to go to that bother? Why, the taxman himself.

"Caveat emptor" remains the best advice to those who choose to remain in high-tax California. As that state's politicians continue to squander their once bright reputation to build their welfare-state Tower of Babel, it's inevitable their henchmen will become more and more ruthless in tracking down every dollar of tax tribute they figure is theirs.

Golden State tax investigators bragged to the Times that their computers can compare bank, sales and payroll records linked to California addresses. "Tax professionals say the state is still a few years away from foolproof technology," the Times reports.

Yep. And computer tracking of the sale of irrigation equipment will nip those commercial pot-growing operations in the bud any day now, too.

But is it really a "fraudulent scheme" for other states to allow and even welcome Californians to establish business entities in their lower-tax environments? No more than it was a "scam" or "fraudulent scheme" for the wisest heads of families to gather up whatever wealth they could carry and flee the confiscatory policies of Lenin or the Nazis, escaping to the far freer shores of America, where hard work and entrepreneurship had at least a reasonable hope of a just reward.