Gone are the days of stuffing mattresses with big money — even the time of invisible bank accounts in Switzerland are behind us — and now the wealthy opt for completely legal use of tax havens. This type of financial activity isn't even technically called tax evasion, it's packaged as tax-avoidance.

Last month the so-called Paradise Papers were released after a series of investigations done by journalists across the world. These documents revealed the offshore accounts of several of the world's most powerful companies and people. In an effort to avoid paying taxes in their respective countries, the wealthy and powerful pay accountants and asset managers to move their funds in such a way that will avoid governments taking a percentage to put toward federal revenue. It isn’t the first time the global elite’s financial wizardry has been exposed.

Two years ago, the Panama Papers were released, exposing what some considered to be an open secret: the wealthy's ability to conceal their assets to obscure offshore accounts in order to avoid taxation. What makes this obvious tax evasion so laughable is that it’s completely legal.

The idea is simple. Powerful companies have access to a variety of international financial institutions that can move assets to areas outside of their national government’s reach. Both the Paradise and Panama Papers revealed that the most commonly used method was to create a subsidiary shell company in a tax haven like the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands, hire a completely arbitrary company director and then slowly send profits to the offshore shell company.

In 2011, Google shuffled 80 percent of its profits through a subsidiary in Bermuda, cutting its worldwide tax rate in half and in some countries to nearly zero.

The wealthy are avoiding paying their fair share. This isn’t a new concept, so why should anyone care? While tax havens are technically legal, it's still a financial model that permits the elite to strip assets from the many. Both paper leaks revealed that tax haven customers come from every single continent. That means that some billionaire or multinational firm from your country is likely not paying taxes that could be used to benefit health care, education or road construction.

The taxes avoided cost poor countries more than 100 billion USD every year, which is enough to finance education for 124 million children according to Oxfam. It's not just developing economies that are affected: Conservative figures show that between 2010 and 2015 the U.K. economy has lost 2.2 billion GBP each year due to tax avoidance. It seems obvious from these examples that the tax haven financial model is exacerbating economic inequality.

To use these international financial institutions, you need to be able to pay huge start up costs, not to mention a range of specialized accountants and lawyers. Only the rich and wealthy of the world have the ability to use tax havens. As the saying goes, you need millions to make millions, or to make millions disappear.

What's so important about the Panama and Paradise papers specifically is that they showed the extent of the problem to the world. Knowledge of tax havens and tax avoidance methods isn't new, but what was shocking was the amount of money hidden from the public being moved around. Several celebrities suddenly owned huge companies in the Bahamas. Hundreds of politicians all over the world were caught up in the Paradise Papers leak. Some of the biggest offenders were popular companies such as Apple, Nike and Starbucks.

Why hasn't anything been done about it yet? The biggest hurdle is the legality of the entire procedure. Tax havens are legal and with the rich and powerful at the top of the political scene, it's hard to push for change. Even if such legal and political action were to be taken, tax havens exist as a huge grey area. Thus, it would take a while to get the right legislation moving. That being said, governments do have powerful tools to make a change. They just have to stop listening to only the wealthy and maybe pay a bit more attention to the rest of society.