US corporations have $2 TRILLION sheltered in offshore tax havens
The largest U.S.-based companies added $206 billion to their stockpiles of offshore profits last year, parking earnings in low-tax countries until Congress gives them a reason not to. The multinational companies have accumulated $1.95 trillion outside the U.S., up 11.8 percent from a year earlier, according to securities filings from 307 corporations reviewed by Bloomberg News. Three U.S.-based companies -- Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. -- added $37.5 billion, or 18.2 percent of the total increase.
“The loopholes in our tax code right now give such a big reward to companies that use gimmicks to make it look like they earn their profits offshore,” said Dan Smith, a tax and budget advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which seeks to counteract corporate influence.
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The increase in profits held outside the U.S. has been particularly large and steady at technology companies, many of which have moved patents and other intellectual property to low-tax locales.
U.S. multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their 2008 overseas profits in Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, more than five times the share of workers and investment they have in those jurisdictions, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.
That report cites academic estimates of the annual revenue loss to the U.S. that ranges from $30 billion to $90 billion.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/cash-abroad-rises-206-billion-as-apple-to-ibm-avoid-tax.html
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...met a family who took him in while he attended school there (teachers' college?) and eventually earned teaching diplomas in ESL and music and now works there, is required to pay some $100,000 in "back taxes" because he and his SO decided to buy a house and his financial records were provided to the US IRS.
He's in the process of renouncing his American citizenship; he only has a little bit more to do (mostly paperwork) to get Swiss citizenship. But he's had it with the US, the only country that taxes it citizens working overseas.
He managed to pay the $100,000 from an "pre-inheritance" from this parents (I believe it was made available to him by his parents to get him out of this mess). They are both elderly but still alive in the US and he visits them once a year, but once they've passed, he's not coming back here again.
Yet, US corporations, who are now "people," can stash their loot in secret, tax-free havens...
