Apple and Google are foreign corporations?

Also, I know people who live and work in foreign countries and haven't stepped foot in the US for decades who still pay tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to the US each year in taxes. So yeah, it's unfair that large, American corporations are somehow exempt.

I'm as tax-phobic as any red-blooded yank, but if we are going to demand ever increasing government services and entitlements (including corporate welfare), we better be willing to pay for it.

That is not correct. Did you actually read any of the links above? Apple, Google, Microsoft and others shift billions of dollars a year in profits ON SALES IN THE UNITED STATES out of the US and to low tax or no tax countries using clever internal sales agreements with their own subsidiaries over intellectual property licensing. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...

I just meant in the general sense. Google needs to pay their taxes too, but tech companies aren't the only ones evading taxes and getting away with it. Specifically this tax? Maybe not. But that wasn't the point.

Do you have a source on that?

Google is 2.4%, I think.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2783382