There are at least two reasons why a locality would want to impose taxes on a foreign company.
1) The foreign company is using loopholes to dodge taxes à la Amazon having dodged sales tax for decades at the expense of local retailers who have to charge sales tax.
2) Protectionism. A specific tax to give local competitors an edge in order to promote the development of local businesses. The rationale behind is this is to trade off the advantages of a "better" foreign offering in order to develop a local company that has more incentive to reinvest its earnings into the local economy. An example would be India heavily taxing Apple products to produce iPhones inside India so that a bulk of the money spent would go back into the Indian economy in the form of wages for factory workers, instead of going to the US and China.
Another example is US and Europe protecting the interests of Boeing and Airbus respectively due to the national security importance of the aerospace companies.
In some cases if another (single) country invents the wheel and thus controls the world's supply, your country would benefit from importing the wheel and selling the other country the axel. But as it turns out wheels are very useful and if the other country has a near monopoly on it due to scarcity, your country would opt to reinvent the wheel so they have the ability to produce the whole wheel and axel combo within the borders without being gouged for price.
1) The foreign company is using loopholes to dodge taxes à la Amazon having dodged sales tax for decades at the expense of local retailers who have to charge sales tax.
2) Protectionism. A specific tax to give local competitors an edge in order to promote the development of local businesses. The rationale behind is this is to trade off the advantages of a "better" foreign offering in order to develop a local company that has more incentive to reinvest its earnings into the local economy. An example would be India heavily taxing Apple products to produce iPhones inside India so that a bulk of the money spent would go back into the Indian economy in the form of wages for factory workers, instead of going to the US and China.
Another example is US and Europe protecting the interests of Boeing and Airbus respectively due to the national security importance of the aerospace companies.
In some cases if another (single) country invents the wheel and thus controls the world's supply, your country would benefit from importing the wheel and selling the other country the axel. But as it turns out wheels are very useful and if the other country has a near monopoly on it due to scarcity, your country would opt to reinvent the wheel so they have the ability to produce the whole wheel and axel combo within the borders without being gouged for price.