Hey, at least it's got a fun name. I can't imagine anyone is too surprised by this. Personally I'm happy to pay my tax burden. I grew up in America, went to public schools and benefited from public services.
Corporate tax evasion like this seems like fixation on a local maxima. There's no way to account for the return on your mandatory tax investment, but their is a return and it's important for everyone.
In theory this is solved by government action to make legal schemes illegal and prosecute anyone using illegal tax avoidance schemes. In practice lobbying against this is often cheaper than paying, so you end up with giant loopholes and defunded tax collection agencies.
At least this hole is getting closed, but that's a minor victory in the grand scheme of things
The problem isn't that these strategies are unfair; the problem is that authorities can't agree on a uniform concept of "fair" because it's in their best interest to get the most business in their territory. Prisoner's Dilemma again, in the opposite direction.
It's unclear why that money would be owed to the US ethically. These companies are, ostensibly, already paying their fare share in payroll taxes, real estate taxes, sales taxes, commercial use taxes, etc.
It's not just this, It's also evasion of taxes that could've been paid in these countries. (Could've, because what they're doing is legal, so they have no obligation to.) What they do, is most easily explained with the Starbucks example:
Starbucks has one subsidiary, based in the Netherlands, that holds the rights to sell coffee with the name 'Frappuccino'. All Starbucks stores are owned by another subsidiary. Whenever a store sells a 'Frappuccino', they pay a $1 royalty on that name. Because royalties aren't taxed in the Netherlands, this $1 is pure profit.
This is from memory, so It's probably not completely right, but in the end they really do evade foreign taxes, not just a double tax in the US.
... and that's before we even touch on the ethical framework around which anybody gets to charge any taxes at all on "right to a name;" the companies we're talking about are already paying sales tax, real estate tax for land, payroll taxes, etc., etc., etc.
... it comes back to the ethics and morality of "Can you tax intangible goods" in the first place, and that's where things get really exciting. For what is the value of a piece of software, and how do you measure it? ;)
The company is headquartered there, the IP was developed there, the founders were educated there, the core technology that made their company possible was funded by US tax payers, the safe environment that makes business possible is secured by police and military funded by US tax payers, etc
When the company then goes on to do business in another country as well, where another nation is providing security, safety, infrastructure, perhaps a public education system that creates a workforce the company wants to invest in... How much does the company owe its home country?
If you graduated university, how much do you owe your alma mater in annual donations beyond what you paid for the diploma program? ;)
When you put money into a 401k, that's tax avoidance.