In Washington on Dec. 15, business executives asked President Barack Obama for a tax holiday that would help them tap more than $1 trillion of offshore earnings, much of it sitting in island tax havens.
The money — including hundreds of billions in profits that U.S. companies attribute to overseas subsidiaries to avoid taxes — is supposed to be taxed at up to 35 percent when it is brought home. Executives including John Chambers the chief of Cisco Systems, say a tax break would return a flood of cash and stimulate the economy.