Study: Offshore Corporate Cash Stockpile Up to $2.5 Trillion

73% of Fortune 500 Companies used tax havens in 2015, dodging $717.8 billion in federal taxes in the process.

A new report, "Offshore Shell Games," by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy details how these companies hoard cash offshore. Collectively, multinationals reported booking $2.5 trillion offshore, with just 30 companies accounting for 66 percent of this total.

The cost to the tax payer is huge, with nearly $718 billion in dodged taxes.

There is a real cost to our communities when we allow a set of companies to play by different rules when it comes to taxes. It’s time for everyone to pay what they owe.

Some of the key findings in the report include:

• 367 Fortune 500 companies collectively maintain 10,366 tax haven subsidiaries. The 30 companies with the most money booked offshore for tax purposes collectively operate 2,509 tax haven subsidiaries.
• 58 percent of companies with any tax haven subsidiaries registered at least one in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, countries with no corporate tax. The profits that American multinationals collectively claim to earn in these island nations totals 1,884 percent and 1,313 percent, respectively of each country’s entire yearly economic output, an impossible feat.
• The 30 companies with the most money booked offshore for tax purposes collectively hold nearly $1.65 trillion overseas. That is 66 percent of the nearly $2.5 trillion that Fortune 500 companies together report holding offshore.
• Only 58 Fortune 500 companies disclose what they would expect to pay in U.S. taxes if these profits were not officially booked offshore. In total, these 58 companies would owe $212 billion in additional federal taxes, which is about 29 times the entire state budget of Iowa. The average tax rate the 58 companies currently pay to other countries on this income is a mere 6.2 percent, implying that most of it is booked to tax havens.