How That $1.4 Trillion In Repatriated Cash Might Result In U.S. Job Losses, Not Gains

Moody’s estimates that there is roughly $1.4 trillion dollars belonging to U. S. corporations that has been building up in foreign bank accounts for years now to avoid the 35% corporate tax that would be levied on them if they were brought back to the U. S. Of course, getting that $1.4 trillion back to the U. S. has been a critical component of the Trump administration’s tax reform bill as Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin have repeatedly argued that the money would be put to good use building factories and creating jobs for American workers.
That said, if history, math and logic are any guide, then the overwhelming majority of that money would be promptly returned to shareholders via stock buybacks and dividends immediately upon hitting U. S. shores. In fact, as University of Chicago law professor Dhammika Dharmapala told the Wall Street Journal, when a similar tax holiday was enacted in 2004 roughly $0.94 of every $1.00 was spent on buyback and dividends…something Gary Cohn apparently found out for the first time via a recent impromptu survey that yielded some ‘surprising’ results, if only to him…

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 19, 2017.