“Our current plans do not demonstrate a need to repatriate them to fund our U.S. operations,” the filing said.
Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman for Google, declined to comment.
Twelve of the 83 companies in the analysis reduced their offshore holdings from the previous year’s level, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Las Vegas Sands Corp. and General Motors Co.
Vegas Sands
Las Vegas Sands in 2012, according to its filing, repatriated $1.37 billion tax-free because it had enough foreign tax credits. The company said it would consider future foreign earnings not to be indefinitely reinvested, and its total accumulated earnings declined to $4.3 billion from $5.6 billion the year before.
The U.S. operates what is known as a worldwide tax system, which means the country applies its 35 percent corporate tax rate to profits that U.S.-based companies earn around the world. Most other industrialized nations impose minimal taxes, if any, on their companies’ foreign earnings.
U.S. companies receive foreign tax credits for payments to other countries, meaning that they can bring home previously taxed earnings with little residual tax owed to the U.S. They also can defer the U.S. tax until they bring the profits home.
“If you lowered the corporate tax rate, some of these problems, they don’t go away, but they’re reduced,” said Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based group that promotes policies favoring technological innovation. The group’s board includes executives from Microsoft, Apple, Cisco and Intel Corp.
Annual Filings
In their annual regulatory filings, companies are required to report foreign profits that haven’t been repatriated and for which they haven’t provided for U.S. taxes.