Following up on yesterday’s post, Progressive Think Tank Backs Repatriation Tax Holiday: Citizens for Tax Justice, Data on Top 20 Corporations Using Repatriation Amnesty Calls into Question Claims of New Democrat Network:

The twenty companies that repatriated the most offshore profits under the temporary repatriation amnesty enacted by Congress in 2004 now have almost triple the amount of profits “permanently reinvested” (i.e., parked) overseas as they did at the end of 2005.

The figures call into question a recent report from the New Democrat Network (NDN), which assumes away the likelihood that a tax amnesty for repatriated offshore profits ultimately encourages corporations to shift more of their profits and operations to other countries.

The corporations, which include well-known companies like Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, Citigroup, McDonald’s and many others, collectively had $269.6 billion in “permanently reinvested earnings” parked offshore (largely in tax havens) at the end of 2004.

This offshore hoard shrank as expected in 2005, to $152 billion, after these companies repatriated most of it in response to the tax amnesty. But their offshore hoard immediately climbed to new highs in the years afterwards, reaching $426.5 billion in 2010.

The recent study from the New Democrat Network (NDN) claims that a second repatriation amnesty would actually raise revenue rather than increase the budget deficit. The NDN study has several fatal flaws.