>>VAT is tax for consumers, not corporations.

It doesn't matter. It gets added to the price. All the money paid in taxes comes from consumers - be it VAT, sales tax, tax on profit, tarrifs - you name it. It doesn't matter which side you tax, it matters what kind of activity taxing is focused on.

>>Because those profits are made from sales in that country

Sales in that country is one element. Another is being efficient and well organized which another country allows. If you want to tax sells in your country - do it, I think it's great idea.

>>just because Internet-based companies can avoid having a physical presence to perform their sales (Amazon still has warehouses), doesn't make them exempt from the same logic.

Physical goods companies can avoid presence as well. A lot of them ship products to other countries but don't have offices there. They pay VAT.

It's easy to see why taxing profits is a very bad idea by considering situations where that tax differs from consumption tax. Here are few showing ridiculousness of taxing corporate profits:

1)Company A makes and sells tires, Company B makes and sells electronic chips. Company C does both. They don't differ much in efficiency or quality and C does the same volume as A and B in their respective industries. Now let's say 2020 is a bad year for tires due to increasing prices of materials and a very good year for chips due to AI advancement (everyone wants new AI equipped vacuum cleaner or w/e). Company A losses money, company B makes money. Company C makes as much money as company B on chips but losses same as company A on tires. Company C pays less tax than A and B combined. I hope it's obvious why this is bad. This alone makes tax on profits ridiculous idea. We just need something different.

2)Company A and B do the same thing. The difference is that management of company A likes buying high level employees exotic super cars and expensive trips. In 2020 companies A and B have the same product, same sells. The difference is that company's B employees drive 5 years old Volskwagens to clients and organize most of its meetings online while company's B employees drive and service super cars and go to Maldives 2 times a year. Company B pays more taxes.

3)In a small country there are only 2 companies and all the taxes come from them and their employees. They do the same thing - produce cars because that's what the citizens are good at. company A breaks even, company B has better management and produce same cars but more efficiently thus showing profits. Company A is happy with functioning as it is. Only company B pays taxes and funds schools, roads, hospitals. Socialists come to power and they want increase corporate taxes (as they are economically ignorant). Now Company B pays even higher taxes while Company's A tax burden doesn't change. Company's B employees lose motivation to work smarter because they see new taxes just tax their ingenuity and there is little incentive to make processes efficient. Maybe it's better to buy super cars and expensive exotic trips.

4)Two companies A and B in country X do software business. A buys licenses for components from a company in Switzerland (high labor costs thus higher prices), B develops them domestically for 50% of cost. Both companies have 10M in sells. B pays 9M for software, A pays 4.5M for development. Corporate tax rate is 20%. Citizens of the country V get 5.5M * 0.2 = 1.1M for roads and schools from company B and only 0.2M from company A, the difference goes to Swiss people. Even if tax rate in Switzerland is 30% it doesn't make any sense for country X to adopt this policy. No amount of forcing Switzerland to extract "fair share" is going to change that, their rate is already higher (of course Switzerland doesn't have 30% rate as that would be idiotic, I am just making a hypothetical).

There are more of this. It's easy to see. Focusing on taxing corporate profits is a sign of being short-sighted and petty thinking. It's not what you want even if equality is your major goal. Taxing profits defends lazy incumbents and makes things we don't want tax advantaged strategy this includes combining various activities under one umbrella, buying pointless shit because of tax deductions and temporary price gauging to kill upcoming companies.