"We first discussed the topic of cash repatriation (or lack thereof) about a month ago. Since then, more and more seem to be waking up that of the over $1 trillion in cash on the corporate "balance sheet" not only is most of it unusable domestically (without being taxed at the marginal tax rate upon repatriation), but that companies are effectively boosting earnings by not paying taxes (money which should be going to the US coffers to pay for the same corporate friendly policies enacted by the government, that is currently being funded almost exclusively by individual taxpayers, and the Fed of course). And massively so. An expose in Bloomberg details how courtesy of various, perfectly legal, tax avoidance schemes, Google's effective tax rate is 2.4%, which has resulted in $60 billion in less taxes paid to the US, and which has boosted the company's stock price by a whopping $100/share! .........."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-googles-refusal-pay-us-taxes-means-us-taxpayers-fund-its-innovation-resulting-benefit-10?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29