Apple leaves overseas cash out of its latest quarterly report
A key figure disappeared from Apple Inc.’s latest quarterly report. It’s also gone from the regulatory filings of Netflix Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google’s Alphabet
Inc. and Oracle Corp.
Cash held overseas. There’s nothing rulebreaking about leaving it out—some tax experts say it makes perfect sense—but the move could make it more difficult to gauge whether one of the federal tax changes enacted last year is stoking corporate investment in the US, as the Trump administration said it would.
Cupertino, Californiabased Apple, which at one time had $252 billion stockpiled abroad, said it plans to repatriate money, but hasn’t reported foreign cash holdings since September. Microsoft stopped at the end of last year. Google, Oracle and Netflix discontinued the disclosure this year.
The tax regime signed into law in December by President Donald Trump requires American-based companies
NEW YORK:
to pay tax on money they’ve stashed outside the US. The new rules set a one-time rate of 15.5% on cash and 8% on non-cash or illiquid assets. Payments can be made over eight years. Previously, companies had to pay 35%, but only if they brought the money back to the US.
“The primary reason for the disclosure in the first place was that cash located in a foreign subsidiary was not the same as cash already in the US,” said J Richard Harvey, a professor at the Villanova University law school and graduate tax program in Pennsylvania.
“It makes sense that US multinational corporations would stop disclosing the amount of cash held overseas.”
But the lack of disclosure makes it more difficult to calculate whether the new tax is ending what the treasury department called a “perverse incentive to keep foreign profits offshore.”
Apple and Redwood City, California-based Oracle declined to comment. Google, Los Gatos, Californiabased Netflix and Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, didn’t respond to requests for comment.