Apple cash staying overseas because of taxes, company says

"Apple is planning to spend an estimated $45 billion of its cash reserves in the next three years, as part of a program the company announced Monday that includes the first dividend for shareholders since 1995.

But not one penny of that is slated to come from the roughly $64 billion the company has stashed overseas. That's because Apple, like other corporations, is loath to pay the heavy tax hit for repatriating that money.

"We do not want to incur the tax cost to repatriate the foreign cash at this time," Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer told investors and analysts during a conference call Monday.

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Along with Google and Microsoft, Apple is among a bevy of tech giants pushing for a tax holiday on more than $1 trillion in foreign profits.

The issue has been a hot topic on the Hill. A bill on the subject by Texas Republican Kevin Brady has 109 co-sponsors. But critics say repatriation is a bad tax policy that rewards the biggest U.S. multinational firms for not paying their fair share of taxes.

The Obama administration has said it would support a tax holiday on foreign earnings only as part of a broader overhaul of the tax code. But Obama's tax reform blueprint, rolled out last month, shunned the idea. It's an issue that's sure to come up again as tax reform discussions heat up on Capitol Hill.

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