Echoing nickff, obviously they're going to seek out the lowest tax rate they can find for the greatest amount of money they can put there. But surely you can s

Echoing nickff, obviously they're going to seek out the lowest tax rate they can find for the greatest amount of money they can put there. But surely you can see that 35% is so high a rate they'll focus more on tax avoidance than is healthy for any of these parties, including themselves? The item I saw about regions indicated Europe was at around 18%. The nickff cited 6%, 12%, 18%, all those are reasonable, as well as 0%, since the taxes they pay by definition eventually get passed on to others. Some wags had commented WRT to the Christian duty to tithe, "If 10% is good enough for God, why isn't is good enough for the Federal government?" That they and so many other US based companies have accumulated such huge offshore pots of money is one of those distortions I go into in my rather long post you're replying to. I submit to you it wouldn't be so huge if repatriating it to the US wouldn't automatically cost them 35% of it. By policy endorsed by no less a moral authority than the US Supreme Court, it's their right, if not their duty, to avoid as much tax as they can.