[acslater00]

That's great. If apple makes $1b, if the bulk of the money is held by a foreign SUBSIDIARY, my stock will go up, and I will pay capital gains. If they give it to me as a dividend, I will pay taxes on that. If they reinvest it in the company and the investment makes money, my stock will go up even more. And if they reinvest it in the company and squander it all, no taxes will be collected on the income, but they won't be able to write the loss off anything either.

The only thing that truly captures the vagaries of 'where money is held' is the stock price. Wall Street don't care if that money is in New York or Guatemala, if Apple has it it's making the stock go up.

[byrneseyeview]

The value of your stock is the net present value of the future dividends you should expect. If you put a billion dollars in cash on a rocket and launch it into space, the value of that billion dollars is not one billion. It's near zero, depending on the odds and cost of recovering the currency.

[jarek]

Wall Street does care about there the money is. That is why tech companies have spent huge sums lobbying for a repatriation amnesty.

[yummyfajitas]

Tech companies want repatriation amnesty so they can invest the money in the US. I have no idea why we want to prevent them from doing this.

[FireBeyond]

So they can invest -some- of the money in the US.

And pay salaries, bonuses and dividends with the rest - without paying the appropriate corporate income tax rate first. That's why.

[yummyfajitas]

The profits were earned in Ireland. Why is the "appropriate" corporate income tax owed to the US greater than zero?

Should Guinness also pay the US taxes for profits earned in Ireland?