Lashing out at what he called “corporate deserters,” President Obama on Thursday increased the pressure on Congress to approve legislation targeting companies that change their address to slash their U.S. tax bill.

Obama, speaking at a technical college in Los Angeles, said corporations were taking advantage of a loophole not available to average workers — and in the process, forcing the middle-class to take up more of the tab for infrastructure and job-training programs.

“I don’t care if it’s legal. It’s wrong,” Obama told the California crowd. “You don’t get to choose the tax rate you pay. These companies shouldn’t either.”

Obama pressed Congress to enact a measure making it impossible for a U.S. corporation to swallow up a smaller foreign company in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

In the process, Obama echoed his Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, who last week called for a “new sense of economic patriotism.”

Obama’s comments put an even larger spotlight on the practice known as inversions, an issue that meshes well with the economic populist tone that Democrats are taking this election year.

The White House is echoing the push from congressional Democrats to enact anti-inversion legislation retroactive to May, and has brushed aside Republicans who say the cross-border deals should be dealt with in tax reform.

Tax reform, Obama said, is “going to take some time,” while the recent rash of inversions illustrates that Congress needs to act to stop those deals now....

The Obama administration is weighing plans to circumvent Congress and act on its own to curtail tax benefits for United States companies that relocate overseas to lower their tax bills, seeking to stanch a recent wave of so-called corporate inversions, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said on Tuesday.

Treasury Department officials are rushing to assemble a broad array of options that would “change the economics of inversions,” Mr. Lew said. Options are still being developed although no final decision has been made about whether to go forward with administrative action to strip away tax incentives for the deals.

The action comes in the face of a recent increase in United States companies reaching deals to reorganize overseas, creating an explosive political issue that Mr. Obama has seized on to talk about a lack of “economic patriotism.” Investment banks have been counseling companies to pursue such transactions because of the potential tax benefits. Two large United States pharmaceutical companies — the drug giant AbbVie, based in Illinois, and the generic manufacturer Mylan, based in Pennsylvania — agreed to such deals last month, and Walgreen, owner of the drugstore chain, is considering one.

Many Americans may have the idea that Canada, with its socialized health care system, is a high-tax country, but when it comes to corporate taxes, our northern neighbors can boast the second-lowest rates in the G-7. That has Burger King looking at crossing the border: The iconic American fast-food brand is in talks to buy coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters to Canada.

In a statement late Sunday night that confirmed an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal that a deal was in the works, the companies said the combination would create the third-largest quick service restaurant company in the world, with approximately $22 billion in sales and over 18,000 restaurants in 100 countries worldwide.

Most so-called tax inversion deals to this point have involved U.S. health care companies buying smaller foreign concerns; this deal would be notable given that the companies involved are roughly the same size (Miami-based Burger King has a market capitalization of $9.6 billion; Ontario-based Tim Hortons, $8.4 billion), and it would suggest that the appetite for this type of tax-focused transaction may extend to other sectors.

The U.S. has a top marginal corporate tax rate of 35%, the highest in the industrialized world; in Canada, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the federal corporate tax rate has been slashed to 15%. The tax regime isn’t greener on the northern side of the border for individuals, however: The average Canadian pays 42% of their income in taxes, according to the Fraser Institute....

...Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is calling for a boycott of Burger King.

“Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders. Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support two Ohio companies that haven’t abandoned their country or customers,” Brown said in a statement. “To help business grow in America, taxpayers have funded public infrastructure, workforce training, and incentives to encourage R&D and capital investment. Runaway corporations benefited from those policies but want U.S. companies to pay their share of the tab.”

Brown called for a creation of a global minimum tax rate.

“We need an immediate fix to forestall a flood of these dangerous inversions and a long term solution that lowers corporate tax rates while instituting a country-by-country global minimum tax,” Brown added. “This kind of common sense reform will close down tax havens that cost our country revenue and cost American jobs. Lowering the statutory corporate tax rate would put companies on a level playing field with foreign competitors and reduce the incentive for them to shift jobs and profits overseas. Creating a global minimum tax rate will increase investment in the United States, raise revenue, and prevent a global race-to-the-bottom.” (...)