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Tech Firms Keep Piles of 'Foreign Cash' In US
theodp writes "There's a funny thing about the estimated $1.7 trillion that American companies say they have indefinitely invested overseas,' reports the WSJ's Kate Linebaugh (reg. or the old Google trick). 'A lot of it is actually sitting right here at home.' And if tech companies like Google and Microsoft want to keep more than three-quarters of the cash owned by their foreign subsidiaries at U.S. banks, held in U.S. dollars or parked in U.S. government and corporate securities, Linebaugh explains, this money is still overseas in the eyes of the IRS and isn't taxed as long as it doesn't flow back to the U.S. parent company. Helping corporations avoid the need to tap their foreign-held cash are low interest rates at home, which have allowed U.S. companies to borrow cheaply. Oracle, for instance, raised $5 billion last year, paying an interest rate roughly two-thirds of a percentage point above the low post-crash Treasury yield, about 2.5% at the time (by contrast, grad students and parents pay 6.8%-7.9% for Federal student loans). Were the funds it manages to keep in the hands of its foreign subsidiaries brought home and subjected to U.S. income tax, Oracle estimated it could owe Uncle Sam about $6.3 billion."
It sounds to me like they are using their foreign profits like a 401k, keeping them in accessible until they need them, and then paying tax on them when they do.
I don't have a problem with Oracle paying more taxes. The "fix" though seems to be that in charging them for any foreign assets on shore that we simply create the pressure that causes them to leave their foreign profits overseas. By letting them use these profits as collateral for loans, we get billions of extra dollars sitting on our banks allowing those banks to give out cheaper loans to the rest of us.
Whether or not Oracle deserves a tax-deferred-savings account like mine, the fix of pushing the money back overseas, seems worse than the illness.
Rich people consume much less than poor people. They wouldn't be rich if they spent their money. Most money is invested to make more money.
If you can't afford kids...maybe you shouldn't have kids?
And naturally if economic conditions change such that you can no longer afford the kids you had during better days you should sell them to the glue factory.