Some of Your Favorite Companies are Still Avoiding Taxes

Bloomberg compiled data that shows that some of the largest U.S. companies have expanded their untaxed offshore tax piles by abut $183 billion dollars in the last year alone. Some of the companies that have increased their offshore tax piles include some of the most popular companies: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). These three giants all added more than 34 percent to their offshore holdings, which is the benefit of earning and parking their profits in low tax countries. The three companies together will be keeping about $134.5 billion dollars from the U.S. government, which is more than twice what they were able to do two years ago.

Bloomberg examined 83 companies, which had a total $1.46 trillion in offshore holdings. The amount held offshore is increasing because of the tax incentives of keeping the money there. These stockpiles make it even more difficult to reform the tax system as lawmakers are trying to bring more of the profits home. The increasing stockpiles are due to a number of factors including the U.S. having the world’s highest statutory corporate tax rate and the option to defer U.S. taxes until the profits are brought home.

General Electric (NYSE:GE) has more offshore holding than any other company with about $108 billion overseas. Last year they only had $102 billion overseas. Many other companies are also increasing their offshore holdings from last year. For instance, eleven companies have more than $40 billion each reinvested overseas while only six companies did last year.