How Much Cold Hard Cash Are American Companies Hoarding?

By on September 21, 2014 in ArticlesEntertainment

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

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