[skj]

What else do you do with 100B in the bank? If they just paid it out to the engineers (yes please, thank you!) half of them would retire after two years.

[jdross]

Well historically when a corporation couldn't reinvest its capital for an above market rate of return, it would either buy back shares or issues dividends so owners/shareholders can reinvest for higher return.

Hoarding this much cash is historically unprecedented, largely because it's mostly offshore for tech companies and repatriating it would cost many billions in taxes.

[lucretian]

maybe they should repatriate it and pay their damn taxes.

[Veratyr]

Why? Why should they pay US tax on money earned abroad? They've paid tax to the local government where sales were made, why does the US get a cut too?

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Enforcement. Getting billions out of intellectual property works better if you have a couple dozen aircraft carriers, etc. to back up the diplomats and trade treaties.

"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."

[ec109685]

Why shouldn’t they? Google pays sales tax here too and yet have a corporate income tax given they are based in the US.

[Veratyr]

My point is why are they subject to a corporate income tax on income earned and already taxed abroad? The US government hasn't supported that income.

[skj]

Without arguing for or against repatriation taxes, I don't think it is true that "The US government hasn't supported that income."

[stale2002]

Apparently this literally happened with much of Google's self driver car department.

They started off paying them ridiculous salaries, and then when the engineers got their "F U" money, they left.