First it was Google; then Amazon. This week it was the turn – again – of Apple to be the latest big international company to come under fire for adroit tax planning. The tech group chose to pay money back to shareholders by raising $17bn of debt rather than repatriate some of the huge reserves of cash it holds overseas, which would have resulted in it writing a big cheque to the US Internal Revenue Service.

The move has stoked the growing concern over corporate tax planning. As a financial crisis became a fiscal crisis and then a political crisis, public anger has risen over a flawed international system that allows billions of dollars, pounds and euros of profits to go untaxed.

Politicians have read the mood, raising their rhetoric to condemn big tax avoiders and what David Cameron, UK prime minister, described as “the travelling caravan of lawyers, accountants and financial gurus”. At a time of austerity, nobody wants to be seen as soft on tax avoiders.