Amazon owns a company that has physical buildings in Texas, and disagrees as to whether that constitutes a tax nexus or not. Pretty easy to argue with a straight face! Tax law is a matter of technicality, not "does it seem about right".
If I own a house, I own a house.
If I own a company (which is just a paper entity, made-up), and that company owns the house, then, I pretty much actually own the house. Maybe not in a technical legal sense, but in a reality sense.
Always be wary of "paper reality" created by lawyers. It's not real. It can be a useful tool, a useful abstraction, but it can also separate us from physical reality, and can be used for evil purposes, and produce non-sensical results.
Another point related to this is that there's a lot of precedent in the courts where, even in a case where someone is claiming to be doing something which is technically consistent with the law, and/or are very carefully exploiting a loophole or ambiguity, there are judges who give rulings based on the principle of, "if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck... guess what? it's a f*cking duck!"
