The thing that confuses me is that as far as I can tell there's no way to establish true market value of internal IP that's licensed between subsidiaries. It's

The thing that confuses me is that as far as I can tell there's no way to establish true market value of internal IP that's licensed between subsidiaries. It's not like FAANGs rent out their source code or internal services. Sure; the paperwork all gets done that convinces a tax official that transfer prices make sense in some way, but the fact remains that global companies pay a lower tax by choosing specific transfer prices despite not having any visible external changes (employing people in the same countries as they always have, doing business where they always did), and that's what annoys most people. > Comments like "companies should just pay their taxes" are like when laypeople say "companies should have websites that always work instantaneously & never have any downtime". Reality is complicated and your opinion isn't that valuable if you don't know any basic facts. Yes, the politicians are the ones to blame, and they seem to be taking their sweet time to fix the issues. That doesn't mean it's unrealistic to say "companies should just pay their taxes". It's more like saying "health care should just be available to people that need it" which is a truism that nonetheless isn't achieved in the U.S. to a large extent, but isn't the direct fault of individual actors in the health care system.