Cry me a f%$#ing river:

A White House tax crackdown designed to put a halt to Pfizer’s planned $160bn takeover of Allergan has provoked fury from foreign multinationals with operations in the US.

Barack Obama stepped up the offensive on Tuesday championing new proposals to deter “inversion” deals — such as Pfizer-Allergan — that companies use to move to low-tax jurisdictions, accusing them of exploiting “one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there”.

Multinationals responded by saying they were being unfairly caught in the crossfire of Mr Obama’s campaign as their operations in the US could also be affected by the new rules.

The angry rhetoric came a day after the Treasury department released new proposals which threatened the biggest planned inversion to date — Pfizer’s takeover of Irish-domiciled Allergan — and triggered big losses for some hedge funds, such as Paulson & Co and Third Point.

“It came as a total surprise. Everyone thought the Treasury had used all their firepower,” said one hedge fund manager.

………

The Treasury’s latest moves would make inversions less lucrative by eliminating a tax benefit for “abusive” inverters. But its plan would also deny the benefit to foreign companies with US operations.

“Rather than using a scalpel to deal with this issue they are using a machete,” said Nancy McLernon, president of the Organisation for International Investment, a trade group for foreign companies in the US.

“It’s a misguided approach. They’re trying to go after those companies that are doing something they think is problematic and carelessly hitting a whole class of employers.”

The tax benefit stems from companies’ use of internal loans to cut their tax bills. By loading up US subsidiaries with debt from head office, foreign companies can deduct the interest payments from their US tax bills — a practice called earnings stripping.

Here is my response to the aggrieved tax dodgers:

The fact that you have been able to skate on corporate taxes for the past few decades do not give you the right to continue stealing from the rest of us.