Silicon Valley's tech titans are in full holiday mode - tax holiday that is. Google, Apple, Oracle, Cisco and other multinationals have fielded more than 160 lobbyists and consultants - including, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, 60 insiders such as Karen Olick, former chief of staff for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. - to get Congress to give them a giant tax break on their overseas profits. U.S. multinationals currently have $1.4 trillion parked offshore. Banded together with pharmaceutical companies and other multinationals in a group called the Win America coalition, Bay Area technology giants say that slashing their tax rate from 35 percent to 5.25 percent on foreign profits they return or repatriate" to the United States will create millions of jobs. Both parties in Congress, desperate to find something they can agree on to goose the economy, are warming to the idea. But the last time a holiday was tried in 2004, under a law Boxer sponsored, billions of dollars in tax breaks went to a tiny swath of multinationals concentrated in the technology and pharmaceutical industries, many studies found. Most of the money went to dividends, stock buybacks and executive pay, despite express prohibitions. Some companies, such as Hewlett Packard, cut jobs after repatriating earnings, while boosting executive pay.
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