system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does the process work where companies/individuals end up paying less tax by taking out loans? And is this something anyone can do?
gpt
I don't think this works for companies, but it does for individuals.  

Let say you are Jeff Bezos.  You have 200 billion in stock in Amazon, but you make a small salary of like 80k (which is what is salary actually is).  But you want to buy a big house, you have two options:

1 - You can sell enough stock to have the cash to buy the house.  However, selling stock makes your income go up a lot.  And then you'd have to pay a lot of taxes on that profit of selling stock.  Lots of taxes.

2 - You can borrow money using the stock as collateral.  You allow the bank to put a lien on a portion of your stock, and they give you the money for the house.  Since you aren't selling the stock, there is no income, there is no tax burden involved.

Anybody can do this IF they have assets for the bank to have a lien against.  Stocks.  Houses.  Etc.