American companies love cash. They love it so much that they keep lots and lots and lots and lots of cash hoarded away in their bank accounts. How much money are we talking about? When you total it all up, American companies control more than $2 TRILLION in cash, or cash equivalents like treasuries and commercial paper. How much of that is actual cold hard cash sitting in savings accounts? Roughly $400 billion.
A good portion of this money happens to be parked in foreign bank accounts, where it lies just out of reach of the IRS' greedy hands. In 2014, the highest corporate tax rate in the US will be 39.1%. Foreign tax rates in friendly countries can be as low as 15%. That is a massive savings when we are talking about billions of dollars in revenue. In order to combat this imbalance, many American CEOs have actually called on the US government to grant a one-time tax holiday for cash-hoarders. A holiday that would involve granting a temporary window in which companies could bring money back to the US at a much lower rate and theoretically contribute tens of billions to Uncle Sam's pockets. Below is a list of the top 39 most cash-hoardingest American companies…
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Apple – $160 billion
Microsoft – $82 billion
Google – $60 billion
Verizon – $55 billion
Pfizer – $50 billion
Cisco Systems – $47 billion
Oracle – $37 billion
Qualcomm – $32 billion
Johnson & Johnson – $30 billion
General Motors – $28 billion
Merck – $27 billion
Intel – $26 billion
Ford – $25 billion
Amgen – $23 billion
Coca-Cola – $20 billion
EMC Corporation – $18 billion
Chevron – $16.5 billion
Hewlett-Packard – $16 billion
Boeing – $15 billion
eBay – $14 billion
Medtronic – $14 billion
General Electric – $14 billion
Eli Lilly – $13 billion
Chrysler – $13 billion
Amazon – $12.5 billion
Facebook – $11 billion
IBM – $11 billion
Dish Network – $10 billion
PepsiCo – $10 billion
AbbVie – $10 billion
American Airlines – $9 billion
DuPont – $9 billion
Walmart – $9 billion
Procter & Gamble – $8.5 billion
Bristol-Myers Squibb – $8 billion
Abbott Labs – $8 billion
Sprint – $7.5 billion
Visa – $7 billion
Loews – $7 billion
Total = $983 billion
