As governments get more aggressive about curbing sweetheart deals that allow many U.S. companies to drastically lower their corporate taxes, it will take a big bite out of their profits - and that's bad news for stocks.
The European Commission is currently investigating the corporate tax avoidance strategies of Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Starbucks Corp. (Nasdaq: SBUX). But those three companies are only the trickle before the flood.