I am no expert on international taxation. However my understanding is that a lot of this is a result of the US tax system being different from almost every other Western country, in that US companies are taxed on their worldwide profits based on the location of their headquarters ("corporate domicile"). If HQ is in the US, you are taxed on all worldwide profits, and the only way to avoid/defer the tax is to keep the profits in those countries. In Europe it's what I believe is called a "territorial" tax system. In that system, a corporation headquartered in Germany with operations in France is taxed by each country only on its revenues arising from within that country, without regard to the HQ. This enables the German company to pay tax in France on its French profits, but then easily repatriate the money to Germany to spend on its German operations or disburse to its German shareholders if it wants to (which of course can then be taxed as income to the shareholders and subjected to VAT when the shareholders spend it). This facilitates movement of capital and is much less complicated overall, as I understand it.
In other words, as in so many other things, if we would get our heads out of our collective 'Murica loving butts and look at how all the other civilized countries do things, we could do things better.