How to End Apple's Offshore Tax Shenanigans

ctj.org — In its latest annual report, Apple said that as of last September, it had a staggering $54 billion parked offshore (since grown, as the New York Times points out, to $74 billion). Almost all of this huge hoard is accumulated in tax havens and has never been taxed by any government. More to the point, most of these untaxed profits are almost certainly United States profits that Apple has artificially shifted offshore to avoid its United States tax responsibilities. There’s a simple way to curb this kind of corporate tax dodging, of which Apple is only one prominent example: repeal the tax rule that indefinitely exempts offshore profits from United States corporate income tax. Congressional scorekeepers estimate that ending the offshore corporate tax exemption would increase overall federal revenues by about $600 billion over the next decade. That’s money that could be put to good use in these times of strained budgets.