[jaredhansen]

Nobody cares "which bank it's in" - but if a company has $1B in out-of-US cash not currently subject to US tax, and bringing it into the US will cost them 30% of it, they may (sensibly, in many cases) just elect to leave it sitting wherever it is.

As to "what does it matter if the government can't take a cut?" --- the government does take a cut, and the reason it matters is that the lower rate will, on the margin, encourage cash repatriation.

Remember too that firms know they will be taxed in the future at (unknown, but estimable) rates, and today's rate will be compared against firms' estimates of current rates.

So in terms of the government's cut I forget the numbers in the current plan but say the corporate tax rate goes from 30% to 20%, and Apple decides that 20% is As Good As It's Likely To Get, and decides therefore to bring $1B of cash into the US that at a 30% rate it would have left elsewhere -- the US gov now gets 200M, rather than the 0 it would have gotten if the tax rate had stayed where it was.