How should we stop corporations from leaving the United States, as both presidential candidates have vowed to do? After Pfizer announced this year that it wanted to merge with the Ireland-based Allergan in a maneuver known as a corporate inversion, the Obama administration put in new tax rules that effectively scuttled the deal.

President Obama characterized inversions as a way American companies to “get out of paying their fair share of taxes here at home.” Last month, the Chamber of Commerce sued to block the new rules, saying that the administration “simply rewrote the law unilaterally.”

We need to put aside the politicized allegations that inversions are a way for corporations to cheat the rest of America. This sort of language confuses the issue and obscures a central fact: All of these corporations are owned by shareholders who should, in theory, reap the benefits of a lower corporate tax bill.

Unfortunately, in our zeal to keep companies in the United States, we have created policies where inversions benefit some shareholders at the expense of others. Perversely, the inversion rules are more likely to punish American investors and long-term investors to the benefit of senior executives, recent investors and tax-exempt investors, including those overseas.