公司最具现金在资产负债表上持有的最新借口，而不是经营业务是美国税法。Global companies that want to expand dividends or repurchase shares face a prohibitive hurdle: untaxed foreign earnings outside the U.S. The majority of cash nowadays resides “trapped” outside the U.S. If repatriated, Uncle Sam can take a bite of up to 35 percent of these dividends from foreign subsidiaries, less credit for foreign taxes paid.
如果，外国子公司也将贷款扩展到美国商业，贷款收益被视为资本的应税返回。税务机关在这样的“正面贷款”中是艰难的，其中一个退休的石油工业财务主管。“任何合同，在不同的管辖范围内的任何合同，而不是货物改变手或在我们的联盟居住的地方被仔细审查;我们不想促进逃税。“
Companies perform gymnastics to avoid repatriation taxes as a result. With $18 billion in its global coffers, drugmaker Amgen had more than enough to pay for a recent buyback. Instead, it tapped capital markets. Rather than repatriate money, the Thousand Oaks, California–based company issued senior notes in November to finance a $5 billion Dutch auction tender offer for shares of common stock.
虽然税收的前景达到了440亿美元，但大型股东投票向其中留下它，Microsoft Corp.的投资者关系经理坚持。“零投资者称，税收缴纳税收并将其推回，”威廉·柯福德说，他们将微软的投资者关系引出在华盛顿雷德蒙德的总部。为了公平，通过股息和回购，世界上最大的软件公司在过去十年中向其股东返回了1770亿美元。
美国公司使用无止境的外国收入来购买美国以外的资产。结果没有美国税。所以公司寻求如何在国外度过。根据Bloomberg的说法，美国战略买家的收购2011年2011年2011年的欧洲目标急剧增加。
Case in point, Johnson & Johnson agreed in April to pay $21.3 billion for Synthes, a Swiss manufacturer of orthopedic devices. Coincidentally, the price tag roughly equaled J&J’s growth in cash since 2008.
膨胀的金库永川市代表“导火线”t Richard DeKaser of Parthenon Group, a Boston-based consulting firm, who says he would not be surprised to see cash balances give way to a global surge in mergers and acquisitions. That may or may not bode well for shareholders of acquiring companies, given the frequent failure of M&A to meet expectations.
The pace overseas will nonetheless accelerate, Howard Lanser, director of M&A for Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee, contends. With ample cash, nimble strategic buyers these days can swoop up assets as fast as or faster than private equity players. A couple of years ago, private equity sources had the edge.
Some observers think cash balances could soon boost the economy. If easing tension in the Mideast lowers oil prices and advanced economies take prudent steps toward fiscal soundness, “business confidence could improve rapidly, enabling firms to invest their reserves,” according to a forecast published last autumn by U.K.-based Oxford Economics, a leading source of global economics data.
Some surplus cash held overseas is already finding its way to emerging markets, where growth is strong. Meantime, companies can park cash there at more attractive interest rates, albeit at greater currency risk.
只要不动摇的外国收入在任何公司积累，他们将云财务报告。现在你看到了他们，现在你没有，根据Jack Ciesielski，巴尔的摩的编辑“分析师会计观察者”，一项投资研究通讯。公司很少举报不动的外国收益，较少相关的延期税务负债。因此，外国收入突破了美国的收入，但仍未掌握股东作为底线的非破坏捐款的收入。“当他们含有大量的外国盈利时，”Ciesielski写道，“业务产生的综合净收入和现金有一个质量问题：他们结束了第一堂兄弟，这是投资者通常避免的财务报告戏剧。”
Still, piling up cash abroad gets a green light from the accounting overseers so long as companies declare to auditors that it is permanently invested, an easy bar to clear. The Securities and Exchange Commission is eyeing this issue, however. At a Regulations Committee meeting on September 27, 2011, SEC associated chief accountant Angela Crane noted the staff’s request for disaggregated financial information where foreign operations have what she called “a disproportionate effect on consolidated operations.”
Absent muscle to compel repatriation even when complaints that taxes prevent permanent investment look like a smokescreen, regulators have put pressure on a handful of companies to report hypothetical deferred taxes on foreign earnings. At the end of 2010, Google reported $16.7 billion in untaxed foreign earnings, Oracle Corp. reported $16.6 billion, Qualcomm $12.1 billion and much smaller Cardinal Health, to pick a company at random, $398 million, according to the “Analyst’s Accounting Observer.” In its 2011 form 10-K, Microsoft claimed that repatriating $44 billion would have made the company incur a tax of $14.2 billion after foreign tax credits and other adjustments.
Supporters of a tax holiday on repatriated earnings in 2004 cited job creation as its rationale. But the repatriated cash found its way to shareholders, lenders and corporate coffers before it trickled to hiring new workers. That outcome may sound just fine to institutional investors, but legislation depends on a larger constituency.
除其他后果外，警告微软的Koefoed，税假假期邀请“道德危险”，在那些公司可能会再次开始堆积现金，直到下一个遣返假期。这是微软抛出其相当重量的永久税收改革的原因。
One solution would align the U.S. with most other industrial nations, where “territorial” tax systems prevail. If implemented successfully, say advocates, a territorial tax system would make movement of funds across borders as efficient as globalization has always promised without increasing the tax burden on companies.
房屋的方式和意味着委员会正在准备旨在将美国居住在世界其他地区甚至龙骨的收入中立立法，第一步将外国收入放入股东范围内。除了包括10个百分点的企业税率降低的特点，达到25％，该法案将提供等于10％的公司股东的40％的国外股东国外烃股市的扣除。
不是那么快，倾向于劳动工会，小企业和其他批评者。通过他们的灯，收入中立是一个问题，而不是解决问题。税收中立只会让全球公司在公司拥有数十亿美元的闲置现金但成千上万的工人的火灾时脱离税收。就其部分而言，奥巴马政府提出将最高企业率削减到28％的返回消除漏洞，并征收了海外现金的最小征税。