Thread: 7 U.S. companies that keep more than $50 billion offshore

7 companies that keep more than $50 billion offshore

By Katie Lobosco @KatieLobosco
ama on tax inversion: 'It's not fair'
Politicians are up in arms over the growing wave of U.S. corporations hooking up with foreign companies as a way to lower their U.S. tax bills.

But for some, a merger, known as an inversion, isn't the method of choice for paring a tax bill. There's another way to pay less in U.S. taxes, without relocating headquarters.

Plenty of companies that do business abroad delay paying big bucks to Uncle Sam by leaving foreign profits abroad, indefinitely. As long as they don't bring that money back home and reinvest it in the business, they don't have to pay U.S. tax on it.

Microsoft, for example, said that it lowered its tax bill by $29.6 billion last year by keeping $92.9 billion abroad, according to a regulatory filing by the company.

Related: How companies are shrinking their taxes

Why are so many U.S. firms reluctant to bring their profits home? Most experts say the problem is America's corporate tax rate, which is 35% on most corporate income. That's the highest rate among developed economies.

Companies typically reveal how much cash they're holding abroad in annual regulatory filings, but unlike Microsoft, don't often say how much in U.S. taxes they haven't paid yet.

Here are just seven companies that are keeping more than $50 billion offshore as of their most recent filings:



Companies like Apple that do business abroad can delay paying U.S. taxes on the billions of dollars they keep offshore, indefinitely.

Apple (AAPL, Tech30): $111.3 billion
General Electric (GE): $110 billion
Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30): $92.9 billion
Pfizer (PFE): $69 billion
Merck (MKGAF): $57.1 billion
IBM (IBM, Tech30): $52.3 billion
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): $50.9 billion

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/27/news...-taxes/?iid=EL

The FairTax would eliminate the reason our companies take their operations and money out of our country. There's around $14 trillion of US private capital stored in other countries because of the income tax, perhaps closer to $20 trillion by now, both corporate and individual. There's no way to narrow the income gap and improve the financial life of our citizens without abandoning the income tax, a failed evil tax that pits one group against another and leads to schemes and plots to avoid or minimize it, that costs Americans and our businesses almost $300 billion a year in compliance costs including lost productivity. The income tax is a burden with no benefit.

Time to kill the income tax and move on to something that lives and breathes with US instead of burdens and robs US, and that's the FairTax, a consumption based retail sales tax on new retail goods and services, taxed one time at the final point of sale paid by consumers who voluntarily choose to purchase the good or service.