Think Progress: Trump’s Plan Gives Corporate Tax Lobbyists Nearly Everything They Want

Another key corporate giveaway in the proposal would allow multinational corporations to bring accumulated foreign earnings back to the homeland at a low one-time rate, known as a repatriation tax. The administration has still not announced that rate but officials have reportedly indicated it will be somewhere in the 10 percent range.

The non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has identified at least 322 Fortune 500 companies with $2.6 trillion dollars in foreign profits that they have not yet repatriated to the United States, avoiding U.S. taxes on that money. This money is typically revenue from foreign subsidiaries and is taxed by the United States not in the year that it is earned but in the year that it is moved back to the domestic parent company.

Of those companies in the Taxation and Economic Policy report, the ten with the most unrepatriated foreign money, as of 2016, were Apple, Pfizer, Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Cisco Systems, Merck, Google, and Exxon Mobil. In total, those companies held more than $1 trillion in unrepatriated funds and spent almost $21.7 million on second quarter lobbying. Apple, the Consumer Technology Association, Hewlett-Packard, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Northrop Grumman each lobbied to make sure it was included in tax reform. Read more

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