Actually, it's a sensible behavior. America taxes 39% to corporations regardless of where they earn profit: an American HQ company pays 39% on everything it sells in China and Japan. In most other developed nations, it's different: a German company selling cars in the US pays taxes to the US on the profits from its US sales, but pays no taxes to Germany on those profits; it does pay German taxes on profits made from selling cars in Germany.
Americans are essentially crying about American companies not wanting to make $10 million selling to Britain, pay Britain $2.5 million in taxes, and then pay America $3.9 million in taxes; instead, these companies want to have a British arm headquarters, make $10 million in Britain, and pay $2.5 million to Britain and NOTHING to America.
Actually, by what I have been hearing lately they want to have a British operation doing their European business so they'll be in the EU common market, then they want to route all their $10 million of product sales though a shell company in Luxembourg where they make a secret tax agreement with the authorities to pay taxes of less than 1% while nominally paying the much higher Luxembourg corporate tax and VAT. There are many other variations on this, licence fees, internal loans, etc... but they all boil down to the same thing: you pay no tax. Eric Schmidt may claimed to be very proud of his companies tax structure, IIRC he even called tax avoidance 'capitalism'. I understand the desire of companies and private individuals to minimise their tax bills and that you can over-tax both companies as well as the unwashed masses. However, it pisses me off in a big way how these corporate bozos like Schmidt consider themselves entitled to using infrastructure and services bought and paid for by tax revenue but also consider themselves entitled to not contribute a dime to this infrastructure and the services that enable them to do business in the first place. The state confiscates over a third of my income as taxes and every time I buy something, import something or use a public service they leech some more with VAT, customs fees and miscellaneous other charges while Eric Schmidt and his company hardly pay anything at all. I do not have the option of doing a Irish Sandwich, a Double Dutch or a Luxembourg Flip to reduce my tax bill to zero and if the blood hounds at the tax office want to roast these corporate weasels on a rotisserie over an open flame then all I have to say to that is 'do you guys need any more wood'???'