© Guadalupe Pardo / AFP
With $124 billion, Microsoft hoarded the most money offshore among America's biggest 500 companies. Apple was second in the UBS ranking with nearly $110 billion kept abroad.
According to UBS, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has the third-biggest cash pile at $86 billion, while General Electric amassed $82 billion outside the US, but $22 billion less than during a previous check. IBM rounded up the top five with over $71 offshore billions.
The UBS ranking also includes other big corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Alphabet, Exxon Mobil, Intel, PepsiCo, and Oracle.
US companies avoid repatriating their profits mainly because of the current domestic corporate tax rate of about 35 percent - the highest in the world.
Last month, the White House proposed lowering the corporate tax rate to 15 percent to motivate companies to bring back massive overseas cash piles.
The Trump Administration pledged to listen to interested parties, and work with the House and Senate to develop the details of a plan during May.
Some experts are skeptical of corporate tax reform, saying that Senate rules could become the main barrier. Reconciliation bills must get only a majority in the Senate, but they cannot increase the deficit beyond a 10-year horizon, which the tax plan is estimated to do.
To win 60 votes in the Senate and then to be signed into permanent law could become the alternative, but chances of that are slim, according to analysts. The plan may also face resistance from fiscal hawks among the Republicans.
At the same time, economists say that possible repatriation of trillions kept overseas could generate additional state revenue, spurring economic growth.
On one hand the "Greed Is Good" crowd (sigh again) would scream "that's unfair! you made it, its yours!" On the other hand if there is a finite amount of something (like money) how can it be allowed any one or even several entity's to have all the marbles, and they keep getting more and more and more by their nature! They are profit machines, that's what they were built for. And when profit machines eat up all the money and then sit on it, then what..?
What then? We go to Microsoft or Apple with our debit cards when we need money?!...
I don't understand how this is expected to work...How can there be so man "supercompanys" with all the money under their control, should we pretend this will not effect us all? That it does not detract a chunk from each and every one of us?
50% of the people in the USA cannot come up with $500 for an emergency. Yet there are TRILLIONS laying idle offshore that these vacuum-cleaners got from the people in the first place
What if 75% of each of those Supercompany's stashed, idle money was dumped BACK on the public, which is where it came from in the first place?! Imagine that.
I think we all would be in better shape! That is if we actually GOT the money and it was not pilfered by the Clinton Foundation's out there, and other middlemen.