Congress after Congress and president after president have promised the American people to fix the broken U.S. tax policies that keep money in corporate treasuries locked overseas with no inexpensive way to come home to benefit American workers or shareholders. The failure has created a record setting $1.84 trillion in overseas corporate money unavailable to Americans. Technology companies from the U.S., exactly the firms that America is relying on to create better jobs, are being hurt the most by the bad repatriation tax policies. Apple is worst hit writes Tatyana Shumsky:
Apple Inc. continued its reign as the cash king into the eighth straight year. The technology company’s $246 billion cash balance accounted for 13% of the total cash held by non-financial companies. The majority of Apple’s cash, about 94%, is held overseas.
Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. — all part of the technology sector — were the top five cash hoarders, unchanged from a year earlier. As a group they held $594 billion, or 32% of the total cash balance.
Spokeswomen from Apple, Alphabet, Oracle and Cisco declined to comment. A spokesman from Microsoft also declined to comment.
Several large U.S. companies, including Apple and Alphabet have had run-ins with European regulators over their tax strategies. European authorities last year attempted to clawback EUR 13 billion ($14.5 billion) in taxes from Apple.
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Dick Young
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