Welcome to TaxBlawg, a blog resource from Chamberlain Hrdlicka for news and analysis of current legal issues facing tax practitioners. Although blawg.com identifies nearly 1,400 active “blawgs,” including 20+ blawgs related to taxation and estate planning, the needs of tax professionals have received surprisingly little attention.
Tax practitioners have previously lacked a dedicated resource to call their own. For those intrepid souls, we offer TaxBlawg, a forum of tax talk for tax pros.
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TaxBlawg’s Guest Commentator, David L. Bernard, is the recently retired Vice President of Taxes for Kimberly-Clark Corporation, a past president of the Tax Executives Institute, and a periodic contributor to TaxBlawg.
My recent post titled The Repatriation Dilemma: Cash may be King, but is Earnings Per Share the Ace of Trump? discussed how taxes may be one of the reasons why cash is building in the balance sheets of corporate America. Specifically, the U.S. tax cost that may result from repatriating cash earned outside the U.S. in low-tax jurisdictions may simply be too high. While shareholders wonder why cash build-ups are not resulting in increases in share buy-backs and dividends, company executives “doing the math” conclude that spending up to a third of the cash in U.S. taxes to repatriate is not prudent.
The post triggered much interest. There have been phone interviews with both the Wall Street Journal and CFO Magazine regarding potential stories. A former Chief Tax Officer (CTO) recalled similar analyses and decisions during his “in-house” days, but did not take issue with the conclusion. Another reader lamented that it was just another example of how U.S. multinationals choose not to take part in the U.S. economy. (Hmmm, do you wonder if he or she purposely pays more tax than legally obligated?) In any event the level of interest in this topic suggested that a sequel is warranted.