  The effective action of a Higgs theory should be gauge-invariant. However,
the quantum and/or thermal contributions to the effective potential seem to be
gauge-dependent, posing a problem for its physical interpretation. In this
paper, we identify the source of the problem and argue that in a Higgs theory,
perturbative contributions should be evaluated with the Higgs fields in the
polar basis, not in the Cartesian basis. Formally, this observation can be made
from the derivation of the Higgs theorem, which we provide. We show explicitly
that, properly defined, the effective action for the Abelian Higgs theory is
gauge invariant to all orders in perturbation expansion when evaluated in the
covariant gauge in the polar basis. In particular, the effective potential is
gauge invariant. We also show the equivalence between the calculations in the
covariant gauge in the polar basis and the unitary gauge. These points are
illustrated explicitly with the one-loop calculations of the effective action.
With a field redefinition, we obtain the physical effective potential. The
SU(2) non-Abelian case is also discussed.
