My father in law was an IRS Revenue Agent. His quip was that about 20-30% of the civilian economy has tax avoidance as a primary business objective. Real estate is probably the greatest example.

Since financial engineering is in many ways more essential than the actual business. His best example was a chain hotel. In the majority of cases, a typical hotel is a tax vehicle that happens to rent rooms. So no wonder everything becomes a bank. :)

This is kind of true I never thought about it until now

Can you give examples? I thought becoming a bank in the US is famously difficult and regulated, so much so that most businesses who can avoid it do so by partnering up with existing, tiny banks. See almost any “fintech” solution, from startups all the way up to Apple.

As far as I understand, becoming a bank is inviting a ton of overhead with little profit potential.