There are levels and levels of enforcement, and, yes, from the across the pond it does look like the IRS is not breathing as menacingly each and every time you may want to do something different.

For example a company like Uber could have never taken off here in Europe because the tax authorities (and not only) would have never let that happened, i.e. Uber (the company) playing the "they're not real employees" game with the authorities. Yes, Uber eventually made it into Europe, but only because by that time it already was a big and established company in the States so it had lots of money to spend on lobby activities.